Electronic Voting: Your Worst Nightmares are True

jfreon writes "On Democracy Now Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting fame, disclosed (near the end of the transcript) that in the compromised 1.8Gigs off Diebold's FTP site they uncovered "an actual election file containing actual votes on election day from San Luis Obispo County, California". Problem is, the date stamp was 3:31pm - during voting hours! The Diebold system uses a wireless network card. Worse: "So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. ""

Slashdot is a small portion of the public

This needs to make mainstream press, and DAMN QUICK.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

actually, shouldn't we try to keep this quiet? doesn't this mean that we can manipulate elections now without the general public finding out? say goodbye to DMCA, UCITA, etc...

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

problem with that is it is likley that DIEBOLD also knows this and is willing to sell this info to different political parties and lobby groups.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

problem with that is it is likley that DIEBOLD also knows this and is willing to sell this info to different political parties and lobby groups.

Yep. And guess what party that woud be?

From the article:

According to Harris, a study of the campaign contributions made by Diebold and its employees revealed an unusual pattern: Hundreds of thousands of dollars were being funneled to a few Republican candidates with very little to any other party.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

Yep. And guess what party that woud be?

From today's Ohio Beacon Journal [ohio.com]"

Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., told Republicans in an Aug. 14 fund-raising letter that he is ``committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''

MSFT and Republicans dead in one global blow

Here is my distorted view of the world....

All things being equal (they aren't), Bush has done enough damage and the press is bold enough with him that he cannot win relection without: it being handed to him by a blunder of an idiot opponent, or if he steals it through fraud.

We are going into the economic winter of an inevitable Kondratieff Cycle [gold-eagle.com]delayed by massive deficit spending. Whatever party wins the next election will take the blame for this.

Based on the momentem of electronic voter machine replacment and the detailed widespread press coverage of the hanging/dimpled chad recount process, if the presidential election is in within 0-5% there will be great hubbub and sevral recounts.

Bush will become president again after recounts play out. The media will be forced to cover the advantages of open source vs proprietary software. It's to short a logical leap for the press not to take.

Durring the mayhem and finger pointing US companies that make software will become the biggest boogie men in the questionable election. Rigged or not, the mistrust of the govt will be enourmous. The stigma will linger and people will understand the software/IP alternitive en-masse for the first time.

When the market/housing/bonds/currency all crash, because the chinese unpeg the yuan from the dollar as late as possible (2007 3/4 as per the WTO) and the yuan springs back hard destablizing everything. (they will do this as sabotage or an economic nuke.) Republicans will take all the blame for the following depresion and the corruption that caused it. (Nothing sucks like a Hoover)

The Republican party will be dispanded, and perhaps a world war (over intelectual property) will occour. Laws on software will radically change for the better in 2012-2015 bringing the US inline with less recent but still new international IP law.

As crazy as it seems, the scarriest thing to me right now is a Democrat winning. Most of these things will still happen but the Democrats will take the blame. Democrats are way to weak to survive a disasterous presidency and will dispand.

Obviously whatever party is dispanded will be replaced, but the populist replacment will take time to accumulate power and the country will swing hard to the left or the right.

Somebody please laugh at me.

Re:MSFT and Republicans dead in one global blow

The Republican party will be dispanded, and perhaps a world war (over intelectual property) will occour. Laws on software will radically change for the better in 2012-2015 bringing the US inline with less recent but still new international IP law.

Furthermore, a Cabal of Masons and Catholics will deploy mind control lasers to manipulate the dollar, crash the stock market and prepare the way for Jehova-1 and the Yeti's impending invasion.

Only "Bob" [subgenius.org] can save us now.

Re:Let's not neglect the donkeys

I am not under the impression that the Democrats are without blame, but I never heard that Dan Rostenkowski commited voter fraud.

The 17 counts he went to jail on were for mail fraud and paying people to do nothing.

Maybe there is a better example? Say in Chicago

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

Damn those evil Republicans!

But seriously, all politicians are evil, and substantial campaign contributions (especially from companies or special interest groups) should be illegal. Dammit!

Sure, say what you want, but I can't believe you really think the manufactures of our voting systems should fall within the same rules as normal companies.

We have special restrictions for all sorts of vendors to the US Gov. For instance most military contractors need to certify that none of their employees are non-citizens.

Saying that voting machine manufacturers should be as impartial as possible is hardly a radical idea.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

Hardly a radical idea? What?

I would disagree and say it is fairly radical. First of all, you are saying lets judge someone for what they think, not what they do. Beyond that, you are saying lets judge them for political thought/speech. (Giving money to compaigns is considered a free speech issue currently by the courts.)

You are telling these companies (and by companies, you of course mean the employees of these companies) that they have no right to political discourse in the United States if they are in this industry.

I can see the interview for a job in this new market segment.

• Interviewer: What political party do you support?
  
• Job Applicant: The Republicans.
  
• Interviewer: Sorry, can't work here, we already are full of republicans and need to balance out to remain "impartial".
  
• Job Applicant: Uhhh, I mean, I am a Democrat.
  
• Interviewer: ahh, very good, your hired.
  

Wait, I got a great idea, all companies should be forced to be politically "diverse" -- we should force companies to hire people based on thier political beliefs... Also, while we are at it, companies should also be religously "diverse" as well... screw standards, screw who does the best work, as long as you get a high enough "diversity" rating, maybe the government will give you corporate wellfare!

*sigh* -- I don't like these stupid, un-secure, un-open, non-standard voting machines anymore than the next guy, but when the political party of the company owner/employees starts to be picked at as the primary way to attack it, I start to worry deeply about political freedom in the United States.

Pass a law that states all voting systems must be open-source and reviewed by at least 5 state colleges or some such, and you will get a decent system (or you will at least know that you can't get one) -- but attacking the political beliefs of the owner/employees of a company is pathetic and sad.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

I would disagree and say it is fairly radical.

Defense contractors screen their employees all the time, because security is important there. Is the security of our elections any less important?

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

Attacking an obviously shoddy and insecure proprietary product produced by someone who has stated they wish to see a particular party in power is seems to be directly relevant and an important part of making sure we don't get fixed elections.

However, the fact that the company is run by republicans isn't relevant. Both parties are corrupt. They're both bought, there are conflicts of interest with both, etc. Bush and Haliburton, the Clinton's and their scandal, etc. I wouldn't trust either of them and until people realize that they're simply two sides of a plutocracy we're going to be screwed.

To use these machines from an obviously biased company is tantamount to election fraud. Saying otherwise, pretending that everyone looks past their personal preferences to provide a fair playing field, is just ridiculous and goes against all of recorded history. The *only* way we'll get a fair result is if people who hate each other watch every step of this together, both watching for the other to screw up, and both afraid to cheat for fear of being watched.

It's not a question of if this particular company is crooked. That's a given. The question is how to keep everyone honest.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

We, the illuminati, have been doing this for years...I mean...wait....damnit, I was supposed to log in as anonymous.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

Illuminati? You mean The Stonecutters?

We Do (The Stonecutter's Song)
2F09 - 8th January 1995

Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do! We do!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Who robs the cave fish of their site?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do! We do!

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

The question is: would Diebold be just too damn idiotic and incompetent to even notice shennanigans like that (95% probability), OR are they more capable and devious than they appear - meaning they've locked down access by anyone but themselves, so *They'll* be in control (05% probability)?
Frankly, either way it's scary.
But the rampant security issues, rather than one carefully managed secret hole, indicate that the first option is much more likely.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

Except that not just upstanding citizens would have a chance to manipulate the votes. Which would mean that Cowboy Neal is going to be our next president, with Natalie Portman of the Hot Grits party as Vice President. George W Bush will find that he will have (-1, Troll) votes in each precinct.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

Prediction: Wars between political campaigns and hackers over the 1337 space of the voting booth results in Ohio registering over 30 billion votes in the next Presidential election, with Luke Skywalker edging out both Dean and Bush, and the Democratic candidate coming in a distant 4th.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

Why not just hack it and make CmdrTaco president? Yeah...... and then CowboyNeal could be vice-president..... and we could all be senators........

Why bother?

The mainstream press has been silenced after the Communist party won a landslide victory in the latest presidential election recount.

Re:Why bother?

Yeah George Bush is a big leftist commie. *rolling eyes*

Ironically, the "neo-conservative" tradition he and his cabinet (except Colin Powel) espouse, was, in fact, founded by a former Trotskyite and Communist. See the History of Irving Kristol [mediatransparency.org], father of William Kristol [weeklystandard.com]. So, we are in fact led by those who espouse an ideology closely crafted and derived by former Communists and Communist ideology. Former Communists running the GOP - go figure! --M

Re:Why bother?

While the Communist party would be fun, a couple of others would be of more interest:

• The National Pot Party [pot-party.com]
  
• Pan-sexual Peace Party [tripod.com]
  
• The Internet Party [theinternetparty.org]
  
• The Expansionist Party [aol.com] (feeling that Geo. W. Bush is a pansy and not being agressive enough in the expansion of the USA throughout the world)
  

Honestly, it would be good to have hackers...and I mean real good hackers, not script kiddies, change the results of a large election to a party like one of the above just to show the real danger to having machines like this wide open.

While I don't normally advocate the breaking of laws (and I love white hat hacking), something dramatic does need to happen to wake some ordinary people up. Of course, this isn't really all that different from the 100,000 dead people who voted for JFK in 1960, but who is counting.

Re:Why bother?

You guys need to be introduced to the Monster Raving Loony Party [omrlp.com]. Check out their policies: although written in a serious manner, some of them are quite silly, such as reducing class size by making the children sit closer together ;) Somehow their rock star leader has become the longest standing party leader in the UK, and they consistently field candidates across the country in every election.

Re:Why bother?

Watch that "F" word if you want your argument to remain credible. There's practically a corallary to Godwin's law over the "F" word.

In case anyone is interested, a more academic (footnoted, reseached by an actual historian) account and analysis of American Fascism is available http://www.cursor.org/stories/fascismintroduction. php [cursor.org]

Please read this article and tell others about it if you care at all about where this country is headed.

Neither "fascism" nor "racism" will do us the favour of returning in such a way that we can recognise them easily. If vigilance was only a game of recognising something already well-known, then it would only be a question of remembering. Vigilance would be reduced to a social game using reminiscence and identification by recognition, a consoling illusion of an immobile history peopled with events which accord with our expectations or our fears.
-- Pierre-Andre Taguieff

The great "isms" of nineteenth-century Europe -- conservatism, liberalism, socialism -- were associated with notable rule, characterized by deference to educated leaders, learned debates, and (even in some forms of socialism) limited popular authority. Fascism is a political practice appropriate to the mass politics of the twentieth century. Moreover, it bears a different relationship to thought than do the nineteenth-century "isms." Unlike them, fascism does not rest on formal philosophical positions with claims to universal validity. There was no "Fascist Manifesto," no founding fascist thinker. Although one can deduce from fascist language implicit Social Darwinist assumptions about human nature, the need for community and authority in human society, and the destiny of nations in history, fascism does not base its claims to validity on their truth. Fascists despise thought and reason, abandon intellectual positions casually, and cast aside many intellectual fellow-travelers. They subordinate thought and reason not to faith, as did the traditional Right, but to the promptings of the blood and the historic destiny of the group. Their only moral yardstick is the prowess of the race, of the nation, of the community. They claim legitimacy by no universal standard except a Darwinian triumph of the strongest community.
-- Robert O. Paxton, Mellon Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus at Columbia University

Re:That's a good one

The NORC data did not "count" votes. This was the great con. All they did was note the condition of undercounted ballots:

For example:

"Voter puched the 'Al Gore' punch. Voter emphasized the vote by CIRCLING the punch. Voter further empasized their intention by writing AL GORE on the ballot.
Cannot count as Al Gore because we're not counting."

The Miami Herald did a similar study that actually COUNTED the ballots and found Al Gore the winner.

The true story of the election can be found at www.gregpalast.com. Yes, Greg Palast DOES have an axe to grind. He hates liars and hypocrites. The first two chapters of "The Best Democracy Money" is available their.

To summarize:
DBT Online/ChoicePoint was selected as a high-ball at $2.3 million dollars. The company who had previously did the job charged $5700.

They were supposed to record cross-checking against public databases and verification phone calls. They did none of this. They were instructed NOT TO.

ChoicePoint was instructed to search for similar names and reduced Jack to John etc... It was supposed to create the maximum number of matches provided the individuals.

The County offices were ORDERED to scrub everyone on the list without doing verification because ChoicePoint was SUPPOSED to have done that verification.

" The State of Florida was content with a partial match of four: names( the first four letters were good enough), ate of birth, gender and race. Not even the address or state mattered in the mad dash to maximize the number of citizens stripped of their civil rights."
- The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, p56

Of course you probably listen to Rush. AS if he hastened spent 6 hours a day grinding axes for the last 15 years.

More headlines...

A corrupt presidential candidate who is poised to lose an election suddenly wins when his corrupt brother, who happens to be a governor of a very populous state, "loses" thousands of votes, tipping the election in favor of his brother. the entire world knows about it, yet the corrupt presidential candidate is allowed to take office.

Oh wait...

Re:More headlines...

Please provide the source for your statement. Otherwise it should be modded as -1 for troll.

Look around the web on site:

here [thenation.com],
here [washingtonpost.com],
here [guardian.co.uk],
here [commondreams.org], and lots more places.

It is clear that the majority intent of Florida's voters was to send Gore to the White House. Furthermore, it is clear that Florida's voting process was seriously biased against minorities, who predominantly vote Democratic.

The only reason why this wasn't discovered during the recount was because the Bush family managed to cut the recount short as long as it was still favorable for Bush.

Or we need to add a new mod of "+1 strong opinion of of a bitter loser."

With Bush as president, we all are losing: we are getting wars, economic problems, huge budget deficits, a failing educational system, rollback of civil rights protections, deterioration of international relations, etc.

It is pretty depressing that Republicans care more about who the President had sex with than about how the country is doing.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

This needs to make mainstream press, and DAMN QUICK.

Definitely. Now, how do we accomplish that? I don't have contacts with the press. I've got contacts on at least one dem campaign team (surprisingly, not Dean!), even contacts in the defense industry, but the press? Nothing. Who does? How do we get this in front of them?

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

That is an interesting comment.

Why would it be "bitter liberal types" who should be worried about voting machines that cannot be audited?

Why shouldn't right wingers also be concerned about voting machines that give you no way to verify who voted for what?

Why is it a "liberal" issues? And why do the right wingers instinctively want these machines?

Curiouser and curiouser!

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

we will succeed in realizing His will and our place in it.

1) God's will should be fundamentally irrelevant in the U.S. government (First Amendment).

2) The USA isn't "better" than other countries from a humanistic standpoint. There isn't anything super-special about the US that God would put it up on a pedestal over anyone else.

People who try to inject God's will into the US government are most often arrogant, naive, and ignorant Christians who think their rules are superior to any others (again violating the First Amendment).

The US is a country ruled by the People, all inclusive, regardless of faith.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

The first amendment does NOT state that God should be kept out of government affairs.

This clause, however, does:

Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Note also that it does not restrict state governments in this area at all.

Again, the above clause does. Any law based on religion passed by a state government must be consistent and not conflict with the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. You cannot, therefore, pass a law that says, for example, that you cannot take the Lord's name in vain, as that violates the First Amendment.

This should be obvious but your comments force me to point it out once again. Most laws I could think of based on religion that aren't also based on common morality (ie. "thou shalt not kill") would conflict with the Constitution in some way. You couldn't say the Pope is the ultimate judge of whether a convicted killer lives or dies, for example - that's up to the Supreme Court, according to the Constitution. This clause was partly (or possibly mainly) intended to promote separation of church and state.

Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public

Dammit!

I'm a bitter liberal type now? Damn damn damn! I always thought I was a conservative, but because this scares the piss right out of me, and you said that that makes me a bitter liberal type, I guess I must be.

Crap.

Re:The system is not the biggest problem

Look, you're ignoring the main problem. The problem isn't people being stupid and pressing the wrong name on the touch-screen (How would that happen, unless they had no coordination?), but in the actual counting of the votes. Counting the votes before the election is over gives a sign of how the election is going, and allows the people monitoring it to do whatever the wish with it, because they are not being monitored.

I'd recheck your sources

Most of the websites and statistics regarding felon "disenfrachnisement" come from drug and prisoner advocacy groups, like the sentencing project... this makes their statistics suspect from the start. Many of these groups use these statistics to make voting for felons a "racist" issue. Also, some of them consider it "disenfranchisement" if a state does not automatically restore your civil rights after your sentence is served. Personally, I see no problem with making a felon fill out a form to get his voting rights back.

Further, some of the states they cite as "permanently" disenfranchising felons DO have procedures in place to restore civil rights... Florida (where I live) is a good example. Florida is often cited as one of the 10 (some sources cite 14 states) that permanently keep felons from voting... NOT TRUE. Check out this press release from the ACLU [aclu.org]

Some states give voting rights back automatically... some have a few hoops you must jump through. Either way, committing a felony costs you. Now, I'm not aware of a single state that does not have procedures in place for restoration of civil rights. If someone wants to correct me, please do so.

Re:The system is not the biggest problem

Sounds great. In fact, let's just make IQ tests mandatory for everyone. Only people with IQs over 100, nay, 120 should be considered competent enough to make political decisions. It's about time we started a class war based on something more meaningful than money or power.

</Vonnegut-based sarcasm>

Re:The system is not the biggest problem

I don't understand what PROBLEM these electronic voting systems are intended to solve. Usability? Fraud prevention? Recountability? Non-centralized weakness? For ALL of those supposed problems, these electronic voting systems are WORSE than paper ballots.

The only advantage I see is that the electronic systems can count ballots faster, but we've never had problems with the speed of ballot counting. Ballot counting is easily parallelized across all voting precincts across the nation. In fact, that is a GOOD thing because the counting process is publicly overseen by representatives from all political parties and vote tampering is limited to a smaller set of votes.

Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bush

Don't forget this [drudgereportarchives.com]:

"The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

Yes. Your votes are being scammed to keep the neocon scum in power.

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

Ah, yes. Mod me down.

Maybe fewer people will be able to form their opinions on freely available information that way. That's what you neocon/conservatives would like, after all. Just like Britney Spears says [drudgereportarchives.com]:

"Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens."'

Don't question the authority. That's the way to go.

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

If the guy ran a voting machine company, and the voting machine company made machines that can't be audited, and then we found on that company's website that they were illegally obtaining data DURING an election...

And if the company - even though it would MAKE MORE MONEY - refused to make an add-on printer so a ballot could be printed, examined by the voter, and put in a separate ballot box for counting to verify that the machine correctly reported the totals...

Well, I might not be convinced he was going to cheat, but I sure wouldn't want to trust an election to his machines.

Remember, with these machines there is NO WAY to know if the machine correctly reported the vote.

SOME of us here work with computers, so we know that sometimes the computers make mistakes. So wouldn't it be a good thing if we had a way to verify what a machine reported?

What if a machine just broke down? Do we hold the election over again, or do we throw out all the votes from that precinct?

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

Even more interesting is that Diebold would MAKE MORE MONEY if they sold voting machines with add-on printers so you could deposit a paper record of your vote in a separate ballot box! However, Diebold - and the other voting machines companies that happen to be owned by Republicans - OPPOSE this!

Additional revenue from add-on sales like this - and the service contracts that would go with it - are immensely profitable.

So what is going on here?

Also, they insult and ridicule anyone who tries to point out that electronic voting machines that cannot be audited are a problem! Even the hundreds of computer scientists who have spoken out are told they don't know what they are talking about. What IS going on here?

What would be so difficult about adding a printer, and having the voter look over the printout and then deposit it into a separate ballot box? Why are they so dead-set against doing this, even when it would make them tons more money? Are these Republican-owned "businesses" after something besides money?

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

I tend to be wary of "Corporations = Republicans = Evil" type rants, as they are often fairly knee-jerk and unfounded, so I poked around a bit. In this case there is a connection, albeit a pretty minor one.

Diebold's SEC filings [sec.gov] show their Chairman / President / CEO to be Mr. Walden W. O'Dell, who has donated [opensecrets.org] $2000 this summer to Senator George V. Voinovich [senate.gov], Republican from Ohio (Diebold's home state). Diebold Inc.'s soft money donations [opensecrets.org] also go to Republicans.

This does not demonstrate to me much evidence that Diebold is "after something other than money", it looks like routine political activity to me. But, while my quick research has neither managed to refute nor confirm your conspiracy theory, I'll pass it along anyway for whoever might be curious.

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

People who want more and more power aren't in general Democrats (though times are changing). Democracy is about the dispersion of power and influence.

The $300 million dollar campaign of George Bush was about SOMETHING. They didn't make that cash by having $10 per plate barbecues. They got that money from coporate fat cats.

By the way, you don't get to be a super-corporate fat cat by being fair to your fellow employee and fellow citizen. You get to those positions by well placed daggers (proverbial) in the backs of your peers and the occasional supervisor (when you can manage it). You get to that place by selling as much as you can for as much as you can for the smallest cost (which means it's often shit). You get to that position by laying of workers, slashing benefits, importing foreign identured servants, busting unions and all around just being plain evil.

After a full day of wholesale theft, who do you turn to protect your bounty. Do you turn to Democrats who (used to) believe in a fair society by which you pay for public services according to your means. Those same democrats often provide low-cost or no-charge services that compete with your schemes to fleece every dime possible. Those damn democrats and progressives try very hard to keep large corporations from selling $1,000 toilet seats to the Pentagon.

Or do I give money to Republicans. Not honest ones (though there are few remaining). Rather, do they give money to the neo-cons who have now publicly stated their goal to merge large corporate America and government. Corporate governance (formerly called Facism). If I give them lots of money, they will slash those pesky environmental laws that stop us from dumping toxic waste in rivers. They will allow us to rape the landspace AND WORKERS. They will turn aside when we fleece Americans. They will overturn liability and tort laws by which consumers sue us for selling them faulty dangerous products.

Hmmm... if I'm a greedy evil rat bastard with a contempt for humanity, who do I choose to donate to. Well at $300 million to $30 million, I dare-say that the evil rat bastards have chosen the neo-cons.

Now the rat-bastards are finding ways to dispense with the even more troublesome DEMOCRACY. Voters will get pissed off. After all, once upon a time their was a robber barons paradise that but dangerous chemicals into the milk itself. Then their was a great depression and many of those who counted themselves among the elite few were cannabalized by their superiors. Sent out to the bread lines by the common rabble. But the common rabble could still vote. And they voted for an Roosevelt.

My gosh, didn't that Roosevelt's cousin also pass the first anti-trust legislation. Isn't that they war hero who led a rebellion against the elitist Republican party and subsequently crushed as a progressive. Didn't those victorious Republicans lead us to our paradise of an enslaved population. Damn what will this Roosevelt do????

Of course, Roosevelt brought about the new Deal. Eventually embraced by most (including the Grand Old Party) up and until Eisenhower. The last great Republican warned us upon departure of the Miliatary-Industrial complex and other such corporate mischief. Against he pursuit of war and strife for the benefit of a few fat cats. The same Business-Government environment that brought Adolf Hitler to power and the world to the brink of utter disaster.

Now we sit with a government being literally run by the corporat thiefs. They are governed by a president unelected by the people (like Adolf Hitler). He is determined to de-regulate EVERYTHING. To diminish the people great institution DEMOCRACY to a sham game. Adolf Hitler never stopped elections. And he never stopped winning.

Here and now the Neo-Cons (Facists) are trying to permanently rob America of democracy without robbing us of elections. They fix them through culling voting rolls of so-called "felons" and fix the voting machines to vote a Neo-Con every

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

It's worse than you think. Election Systems and Software, the company that builds, owns and largely runs [thehill.com] many of the voting machines used in the US (and 80% of those used in Nebraska) was at one time headed and is still partially owned by Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator from Nebraska - who, surprisingly, won unprecedented victories in his state against an incumbent Democrat governor, winning by the largest landslide ever and taking the majority among demographics that had never voted Republican in the past.Hagel had avoided reporting his ownership, and then the whole trail started to come out into the open. It also turns out that Election Systems and Software was heavily funded by the conservative Christian fundamentalist Ahmanson family. [au.org]

Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus

... and is still partially owned by Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator from Nebraska - who, surprisingly, won unprecedented victories in his state against an incumbent Democrat governor, winning by the largest landslide ever and taking the majority among demographics that had never voted Republican in the past.

Actually, this is one of the times I'd be LEAST likely to suspect election fraud. You seem to forget that any election more attention-getting than local school board is going to be continuously monitored by opinion polling.

If, as you suggest, the landslide was fraudulent, then the election results would have no relation to either the pre-election polls or the exit polling. This would attract an awful lot of attention in the media, and I believe that any fraud on the scale that you suggest would at least be openly accused.

The only place, in my mind, that election fraud would be useful beyond the threat of detection would be in extremely close races -- those that no one has any idea who will win. In those cases, than altering the votes by 1% would still be within the margin of error on even the exit polling, and so wouldn't be immediately suspicious.

We're trying to spread democrazy?

How about some protections for democracy back home first? This is utterly unacceptable.

Question

Does those voting data also tie person with vote? In other words can you "just" rig the election, or can you also keep a full database of people's voting habits?

Kjella

WS FTP

Next time when they decide to use WS FTP someone should tell them to disable the WS_FTP.LOG files. *shakes head*

Boycott

In typical slashdot fashion, we must protest this gross error in security the only way we know how - BOYCOTT!! If millions of geeks suddenly stop voting, the elected officials are going to HAVE to listen to us ... right?!

i hope we don't over-react

I think the safest thing we can do now is to wholly invest in this new technology and pretend the problems aren't there. If we change things around at all or abandon this technology, hackers and terrorists win. Think about that.

OSS

Is it too much to hope that our public officials will realize the potential for corruption, fix it (though any of the possible ideas which have been suggested on /.) and move on?
True, paper and pen ballots are vulnerable to tampering and etc, but at least you can recount the ORIGINAL ballots as the voters filled them out. Electronic ballots lack such a safeguard. Unless of course we print out a paper-copy of the ballots to keep in a lock-box just in case the voting procedures are called into question. But then why not just use paper ballots in the first place??

Re:OSS

But then why not just use paper ballots in the first place??

Because one of the hottest debates in a recount is over disputed ballots. One only had to see the whole hanging chad / pregnant chad bullshit in Florida to grasp this concept.

Imagine this: the voters get clean laser printout with their selections. The voters verify the selections and put them in the box. A week later, a recount is issued, and wow! No disputed ballots! It's all there in plain toner.

Of course, the ballots would probably have a barcode to be used for recount, and some 1337 haxor could alter the barcode while printing out the proper selections, causing the recount to be skewed. But if the recount is thorough, then eventually someone will count the printed-out selections, and spot the discrepancy.

seriously guys...

before we worry about the voters figuring out the ballot system, let's worry about how the voters are educated about the candidates in the first place. at least someone with the knowledge to hack the voting system in the first place is educated. their choice for our nations leaders would better suit the technology savvy of us anyway. what are we worried about? the ball is in our court.

Information on Voting Machines Issue

The Commonweal Institute has compiled quite a bit of information [commonwealinstitute.org] (scroll down to the links) about the problems with electronic voting machines.

mod me down

"So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. ""

Mod me down, because I am obviously too dumb to realize that just because the data from a machine makes it onto a server, does NOT mean that you can push data back.

You think, maybe, the voting machine pushes its data to a repository and defined intervals? Maybe? kinda?

teknopurge

Re:mod me down

I think the point is that it would be very easy to prevent any communication to or from the voting machine during voting hours, but that while, as you say, it would be possible to ensure that only outgoing communication can happen, it's relatively difficult to ensure and prove that the outgoing communication doesn't allow any incoming communication. Bear in mind that TCP/IP, for example, is inherently two-way; it's impossible to send packets unless you can receive ACK/NAK messages back.

Re:mod me down

does NOT mean that you can push data back.

The people who built the machine are the same ones running the data stream. They've got ROOT. Having any data access in the middle of the election means that Diebold could write back too, and that simply shouldn't be possible with a well-designed voting system.

Re:mod me down

Mod me down, because I am obviously too dumb to realize that just because the data from a machine makes it onto a server, does NOT mean that you can push data back.

The connection is a plain old modem connection (as mentioned in the article). By its very nature it's able to receive information in addition to sending it. Hopefully the machines won't accept any modifications to the vote record, but this does establish that an previously unknown channel, open during an actual election, is available. It doesn't necessarily mean anything wrong was occurring, but it does mean that it's possible for something wrong to happen. For something as important as our democracy, I demand the highest levels of security. Trusting a private company with strong political ties to do the right thing seems stupid.

You think, maybe, the voting machine pushes its data to a repository and defined intervals? Maybe? kinda?

Hmmm, I'd really rather not have my voting machine sending its vote information to a private company in the middle of the vote. Again, as mentioned in the article, by law you cannot count the votes until the polls have closed. Making the numbers available to an outside party isn't allowed. (This is, of course, why there are exit polls instead of the networks just hooking up to the poll computers for up to the minute totals.)

Calm down everyone

As the next President of the USA, I promise to make fixing this problem one of my top priorities.

Worst nightmare???

Are you kidding? If the vote is this easy to rig? Congratulations, CmdrTaco, you've been elected!

votedriving?

Great, now we'll have people cruising by with cantennas and VoteStumbler trying to get extra votes in for that black guy from Hackers

Reading doesn't imply writing

So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines.

Not necessarily. Just because a resource can be read from doesn't mean it can be written to. With proper design...

Oh -- we're talking about Diebold? Nevermind...

This is why e-voting may never take off

The general public and opponents of electronic voting will use this as "proof" that e-voting can never be stable and reliable. I fear that any blunders we have now may severely cripple public perception to the point that the masses won't WANT to e-vote, despite the ease and efficiancy such a system could provide. I also fear that we won't be able to EVER make an unhackable e-voting system - humans are falable creatures, and with something so obvious a target, there will always be attacks launched against it to expose the inevitable weaknesses, with resulting bad press.

Every technological setback may end up as another knife in e-voting's back. ...then again, maybe the public will get used to crackable e-votes. I mean, what, 95% of them run Windows unpatched, right?

Dammit,

...next thing you'll know, we'll get an actor elected as president.

Thank god the DMCA prohibits the disclosure of this type of info, because if anyone finds out... we'd be screwed.

Re:Dammit,

..next thing you'll know, we'll get an actor elected as president.

Those were the good ol' days, kid. Small government, wars that ended, and a Commander-in-Chief who kept his trousers on while working.

Come to think of it, the music was a lot better back then too, wasn't it?

Upon Further Examination...

The following names were found in the data...

Edgar Neubauer
Prudence Goodwyfe
Mr. and Mrs. Bananas
Humphrey Boa-Gart
Snowball I

As expected they all voted for Sideshow Bob

Falicious logic in article

OK, now there are some pretty serious implications if the files described in the transcript are what they appear to be. However, I have to say, I'm not that impressed by the quality of some of the reasoning:

... you see, a modem is always two way. If you can pull the information in, you can also push it back through the pipeline the other direction. So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines.

What is wrong with this picture? And if nothing is wrong why can't I edit the Slashdot home page?

Perhaps high-tech isn't the answer

Unless an electronic voting method can be proven (in the mathematical sense) to be accurate and secure, we probably are much safer from fraud using pencil and paper in a highly distributed voting scheme.

Perhaps a few precincts can be corrupted with paper voting, but the whole nation can be corrupted with electronic voting. What moron puts a wireless adapter on a voting machine, anyway?

Voting is a fundamental exercise in any democratic system. I think being very cautious and conservative is justified, here. Chasing electronic voting for its own sake is simply foolish. It almost seems the push for electronic voting is due only to hungry contractors trying to make a dime for themselves. The 2000 Florida vote is merely a red herring in all this.

Just make your X on your ballot

I really don't understand why voting should be electronic -- it is far more open to large-scale abuse than paper (pretty hard to convincingly fake millions of votes on paper, damn easy to change a block of data).

Speed in counting? Who needs it? It's not like the offcials take office the day after the election anyway -- hell, the President has to wait two and a half frickin' months. Why the rush to have an instantly-countable system?

Furthermore, in many other large-ish countries (such as France, the UK and Germany), voting is still done by making a big honkin' X on a circle next to the name of the guy you want. And no, it's not a bubble form that has to be filled in just right -- just make your damn X as sloppy as you please. No hanging chads, no network to hack, no problems reading it. And they still have the results in by the morning in time for the early papers.

So why have electronic voting again?

Cheers,

Ethelred

A Slashdot business plan

1.Break into voting machine
2.Change votes
3.??
4.Profit!

Talk to your Congresscritters

Don't just complain, act: There is a bill in Congress introduced by Rush Holt, D-NJ. It is called "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003". It is H.R. 2239. It currently has 29 cosponsors and needs more support. The Summary page is here [loc.gov]. The press page is here [house.gov]. Congress is in session again now. Contact your Congressperson and demand they support this bill. It would require a voter-verifiable paper trail.

Will anyone do anything about it now? Nah...

This does not surprise me.

The only way people are going to get a wakeup call is if a group of people got a database of eligible voters from local precincts complete with whatever data is necessary to fake a ballot, go into said precincts, and make it look like some unknown Non-Democrat/Non-Republican party candidates (who wouldn't have won anyways) won the election.

Alternately, it would humor me if some "terrorist" organization used this hole to severely screw up the vote by mass-wiping voting terminals/databases.

BTW: How would someone catch this before it's too late? Most precinct staff are volunteers, and they definitely can't see who voted what...

And with code like this???

// Voter Validity Checks if voterID is an int
// If it is, then dude, it must be valid!

voterIsValid = KindaVerifyVoterValidity(voterID);

// A switch would be better but the way I
// see it, there are only two candidates:
// the one I want to win and "who cares"

if(vote > 1 && voterIsValid == True){
vote_for_my_candidate++;
vote_for_whoever = GenerateRandomNoise();
}

I call shenanigans!!!
(go home and get your brooms!)

Help fix the problem!

I posted a comment on a related thread mentioning the project I am involved in, EVM2003 [sourceforge.net]. We had a slightly rocky start, as project do, but things are underway.

The idea of EVM2003 is to create Free Software voting machine, and to implement machines that also produce voter-verifiable paper trails (i.e. visually readable printed ballots). We will do a number of security things right, where the commercial companies have done them wrong... they have aimed for "security through obscurity" or "just trust us." As well, part of our requirement is to have fully blind-accessible voting that maintains complete anonymity.

Anyway, I (David Mertz [mailto]) have taken over as Developer Lead recently, and am trying to get the development of the demo rolling. Part of that effort is recruiting some more developers, and splitting the project into several only loosely connected parts. Feel free to contact me--the standard ballot system (in the demo version at least) is being done in wxPython; but conceivably we would choose other languages/technologies for bar-code reading, printing, blind-voting, etc. (my preference is to use Python though, for consistency and rapid development).

your expectations are too high

Point is paper is a PITA. However, it is substantially more difficult to compromise a physical ballet than electronic data.

A paper trail is comparatively expensive, but worth its enduring characteristics in recording a vote.

They don't know how the votes are counted...

Harris told Democracy Now!: "We now know that the machines that they're making that count the votes are not secure from tampering. And add to that, we've got a situation where everything inside the machines is secret, we're not allowed the see how they count the votes. So this is not an acceptable situation."

I know! I checked out the souce code from the h4x0r3d FTP site. In fact, I even recognize the hardware it was written for! (Atari 800) It was written in atari basic. The offending code looks like this.

35 if gwb algore then goto 40
37 goto 45
40 gwb=gwb+(algore-gwb)
45 goto 10

You can tell by the line numbering that this was put in as an afterthought. Ya I bet those bastards didn't think anyone could still decipher archaic line numbers and goto statements of atari basic, BUT IM STILL HERE HAHAHA!

How to create honest and fair electronic voting

1. Make the entire system end-to-end open source. This way any alleged abuses can be found in the code. (or proof that they do not exist in the code)
2. Force everyone to use the same system. Develop it at a national level for use at every local level. This insures everyone is using the same thing and that there are no advantages in one juristiction over another.
3. Use separate systems for voter registration/verification and voting. The first system should allow a person to use any voting facility in his juristiction and function like the log books. It will verify that a person only votes once. It can be hooked up to a WAN so that he can not leave and vote in another polling place. When he is signs in he is given a keycode to access the second system. It should be a unique keycode that can only be used to vote once and not tied back to his/her registration. With a valid keycode you log into the voting system and exercise your civic duty. When the transaction is complete your voting choices are stored with the keycode. Because the keycode is not tied to the registration your anonymity is preserved.
4. When the polls close, the number of votes are compared to the number of keycodes assigned for verification. At this point a phone or network jack can be connected to the voting computer for transmission of the results.

Vague information on encryption

This page [diebold.com] on Diebold's website mentions that "Election results are securely stored utilizing world-class encryption techniques." As far as I can see, that's all they tell you about their encryption. Does that mean it has the same 128-bit encryption as, say, Mozilla? (Which, I suppose, is still pretty darn secure, but probably not "world class.") Is the "world class" bit is just marketing hype? Diebold doesn't say anything, which makes me a little nervous.

And what about their wireless security? You can store votes in a steel box protected by voracious bears, but if they (the votes, not the bears) aren't protected on the way to wherever it is that they count them up, it doesn't make much of a difference. (I'm assuming here that that is what the wireless networking is used for). Is Diebold using WEP, which can be broken in a couple of hours? Unless Diebold has adopted WPA early (which, given their track record on security, I kinda doubt), some schmuck could sit in his car outside the polling place and run a wireless packet sniffer on whatever traffic is being sent.

The way that Diebold seems to be hiding information on its machines' security is disturbing - you'd think that if they had solid software they'd talk a little about it to impress potential customers, rather than just making vague blanket statements. Given everything that's happened, though, that's apparently is not the case.

Scaring voters away from democracy

Maybe the powers that be fear people will demand true participatory democracy when they see the power of electronic voting. If it were made easy and secure, people could vote directly on the issues that effect them, rather than employing politicians look after their interests. I live in California, and yes, ballot initiatives have lead to some wacky laws, but not nearly as many as politicians themselves have made. I don't buy the argument against direct democracy: that voters can't be trusted to lead the country. If people can't be trusted to lead themselves, how can leaders be trusted to do it? Kang and Kodos notwithstanding, aren't politicians people too? By scaring everyone into believing that electronic voting is inherantly insecure, people will never embrace a technology that could give them more direct control over their government. /me removes tinfoil hat.

this is so wrong...

this is really frightening, and must be stopped PRONTO. The computer may be useful for helping people to fill-out/print the ballot, and for rapid counting. But, as has been said a thousand times already, there must be a paper trail.

Better yet, I think the bureau of printing and engraving should make some fancy counterfeit-resistant ballots, each printed/embedded with a unique serial number in a place where everyone can keep an eye on the process.

After the election, any unused/mismarked ballots must be accounted for. The ballots should have a matching stub with the unique number and what they voted for that the they can take home with them and may at any time go to the county clerk's office to verify that their ballot is still recorded as having said what they thought they said.

The absolute best way to fight this is;

If they have electronic voting, demand a ballot and don't go away until you get one. Make sure to make a scene and talk loudly about how you heard the machines were insecure on slashdot and how the situation in Nebraska is fishy and how you won't use the machines becuase they are rigged. If you can get a mob together to go and screw up the machines beforehand, that'd be better.

Seriously, I'v had my fill between corperations and the goverment. When I goto vote next election, if they have electronic machines made by any of these fishy companies with no paper trail, I'm getting a chainsaw and spraypainging "democracy" on the sides, throwing on a nasty nasty chain, hiding it in a trombone case, getting in a buisness suit so I look like a hurried musician, and when I get in the building, I'll start the puppy up in the bathroom or some consealed area, run out screaming "You want democracy, I'll give you democracy!!! Lets do this by paper!" and rip the machines to hell.

Do I care about the prison time? The better question is, what jury on earth is going to convict me? >:) Especially if I proove that my motives were justifyable, there's something fishy going on and the goverment is bieng fishy, denied me a printout of my vote and ballot, and make it a point to tell the jury they don't have to convict me. Plus, I'll make national news for sure, a psycho running into a voting area with a chainsaw and ripping all of the boxes to shreds? You'd bet that it'd get all over the god box.

Sure, I'll take it up the ass a few years in jail and have a felony conviction to ensure that the voting system isn't rigged. Besides, I'm sure it'll look GREAT on a resume!

FTP timestamps?

FTP Timestamps are added by the FTP server. the FTP protocol only transfers the contents of the file, and then recreates that file in the native file system. since file modification dates are /not/ part of a file, but part of the file system, this information is NOT PART OF A FILE DURING FTP TRANSFER

this means that whoever put the file there, put it there during the daytime. it doesn't mean the file was transferred off a voting system during the daytime.

that said, i still have concerns about voting machines with a wireless interface.

for your really worst nightmares

consider this: the ceo of diebold is a strong supporter of bush (nothing wrong with that), and he sent out a fundraising letter [ohio.com] proclaiming that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

now let's talk conspiracy theories

The proper way to hack an election....

Everybody knows the proper way to hack an election is legally through the Supreme Court, not with computers, duh.