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Diebold Audit Released, BlackBoxVoting.Org Shut Down 360
Chris Soghoian writes "The State of Maryland requested an audit of the Diebold electronic voting system by SAIC, after a report released by Johns Hopkins University and Rice Researchers (disclaimer: I'm one of Dr Rubin's students) noted several security issues. A condensed, from 200 to 40 pages, and censored version of the report has been released online (PDF link). The report notes that 'SAIC has identified several high-risk vulnerabilities that, if exploited, could have significant impact upon the AccuVote-TS voting system operation.'" However, Diebold says Maryland are moving forward with installation with "new security features" included, and elsewhere, Badgerman points out "Diebold has shut down blackboxvoting.org, apparently with copyright claims made to their ISP. But you can still go to the blackboxvoting.com site."
Blackboxvoting is a great case waiting to happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:3, Informative)
You're full of it. Adbusters have repeatedly had their ads refused by major media corporations, even though they were prepared to pay the going rate. The media said they would not run the ads for any price. So even if you have money, the current system doesn't necessarily give you a voice.
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:3, Informative)
At least two people will be fairly represented. None of the rest of us though.
How is this any different than the last 100 years?
We've got the Democraps and the Repugnicans, and all is well. If sages like Britney Spears tell us to trust in our president, why should we ask questions? We have to have faith in the the massive power a federal government wields over the people! Only they are so wise to guide each of us in our daily tasks. It is great that there are millions of laws to provide clarity and
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parsing error: Too many typical conspiracy/Slashdot-cynicism words in one sentence. Please remove the ad hominem text cited above and try again, proceeding with logic this time instead of hysterics.
Seriously, is this the best we can do? Of course there are vile reasons behind Diebold's getting away with this, but do you have to resort to this tired, adolescent "mass media loves big corporations loves evil government" schtick to get your point across?
I'll give you a hint: when you start your arguments like this, absolutely nobody listens to what follows.
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Because the mass media has no interest in overthrowing the corrupt big-business driven world blah blah blah.
It's not the most eloquent sentence but the point is valid; the large media outlets very obviously have self interest in maintaining the status quo hence, Britney kissing Madonna is front page news while actual documented vote fraud is overlooked.
The irony here is that you then go on to use an ad hominem attack by calling the original poster "adolescent". Simply amazing.
I'll give you a hint: Do not attempt to sound smarter than you are, it's very transparent.
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, since mass media is big corporations, the above reduces to "big corporations love evil government", something which has been proven repeatedly over time.
Jesus, do you need us to spell it out for you?
Call it a "tired conspiracy theory" if you want, but the links in the chain from a to b to c are so strong and backed by so much evidence (circumstantial or otherwise) that you'd be a fool to discount this "schtick" out of hand.
Come up with a hypothesis that does a better job of explaining both what we've been seeing and what we haven't been seeing and is consistent with everything we currently know and I, for one, will sit up and take notice. But until then, this "conspiracy theory" does a better job of explaining just about everything that has been happening than anything else I've seen.
I'm no conspiracy nut. My most valuable tool is the scientific method, and most conspiracy theories are certainly crap. But this particular "schtick" is very different, and I'll continue to use it to explain the goings on until I find a better explanation.
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:3, Interesting)
The media has covered (to death) lots of stories that hurt corporations, big and small. Alar? Firestone tires? Faked truck explo
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:3, Insightful)
One reason the media corporations might not be interested in covering something like the Diebold situation is that there's little corporations hate more than uncertainty. The ability to rig elections via voting machines like the Diebold ones introduces certainty into the election process itself. While the current situation means that the person elected will probably be someone favora
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:3, Interesting)
publically traded companies in the U.S., you will
very quickly come to see that the interests of the
media corporations coincide with those of the
corporations which are outside of the media sector:
The set of persons who occupy the boards of the
publically traded companies is quite small, and
a few notables occupy seats on a large number of
boards. It is the interests of this elite few
that dictate the policies of the bulk of the
publically traded corporations in th
Re:Why is the mass media not all over this???? (Score:5, Interesting)
CEO's are a quite tight group of people. Generally a person who sits on the board of one company sits on the board of up to ten other companies as well. Do you really think that MSNBC, CNN, FOX, ABC, etc, don't a) own stock in Diebold and other voting machine companies, and b) have board members who sit on Diebold's board as well?
Walden O'Dell, President of Diebold is also a board member of Lenox (yes, the heating and air conditioning company). This has nothing to do with media ownership, but demonstrates the amount of spread involved in corporate ownership.
Re:Blackboxvoting is a great case waiting to happe (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Blackboxvoting is a great case waiting to happe (Score:2)
Yes, but with a conservative majority that has already shown it is willing to disenfranchise thousands of voters in a presidential election
Do you know how many justices concurred on the Bush v Gore decision?
Re:Blackboxvoting is a great case waiting to happe (Score:2)
Kind of makes you think twice about those lifetime tenures, doesn't it?
Small correction: link to memos, not source code (Score:5, Informative)
The memos were sent to me by an insider, and I just got them 2 1/2 weeks ago.
This is important, because one is similar to software piracy (though debatable, because they are under some obligation to protect things if they want to call them trade secrets, and no one in their right mind would want to pirate this system, called "junk shit" by their own technicians, to resell it.
The memos, though, are just internal communications that were leaked, and once leaked and public, which they certainly are by now, when used only for fair use reasons in the public interest, the legal issues are quite different.
Diebold is winning (Score:5, Funny)
You have the right not to vote. Any vote you make can be used against you in a court of law. The judge presiding in such a court of law may be appointed by Diebold, Inc., and need not require a jury, but if a jury is summoned, it need not be a jury of your peers.
By acting to vote you consent to our determining whether your vote is valid, and in the event it is judged not to be valid, you consent to our voiding your vote and further voiding your right to vote in the future.
You furthermore acknowledge that owing to storage and bandwidth limitations that Diebold, Inc., may experience, your vote may be digitally compressed in a way such that your true intent in casting the vote may be lost. If such an eventuality should occur, your vote may be determined using statistical data derived from any source we deem appropriate or convenient.
You have the right to protest if your vote is cancelled, altered, or in any way modified as the result of such action on our part, however, you hereby acknowledge that in such an eventuality, Diebold, Inc. may determine that your right to vote is deleterious to democracy as implement by Diebold, Inc., and therefore may be considered to be an overt act against the national security of these United States.
You have 10 seconds to comply.
God Bless America.
in other news (Score:5, Funny)
"I.C. Weener" of the Cryoget Washington Head party and "Amanda Hugenkiss" tied for second with exactly 42424242 votes apiece.
Re:Diebold is winning (Score:2, Interesting)
The Constitution Amandment #28 (Score:3, Funny)
In that case, they may as well make an amandment:
We the corporations of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Profit, establish monopoly, insure domestic compliance, provide for the common interest, promote our welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
[it's a joke people]
hanging bits? (Score:5, Funny)
I insist on paper and pencil voting (Score:5, Funny)
__X__ CowboyNeal
Insecure Voting (Score:2, Interesting)
Insecure by nature, not just design (Score:2, Interesting)
And what is worse is the data is physically very sensitive (easy to destroy or tamper with). The fact that the information is drawn from many sources (all across the country), means a lot room for any sort of problem.
Unfortunately, any electronic voting system will probably n
Diebold sure liked that report (Score:5, Interesting)
SAIC's independent review states, "While many of the statements made by Mr. Rubin were technically correct, it is clear that Mr. Rubin did not have a complete understanding of the State of Maryland's implementation of the AccuVote-TS voting system...The State of Maryland's procedural controls and general voting environment reduce or eliminate many of the vulnerabilities identified in the Rubin report."
SAIC's report continues, "Rubin states repeatedly that he does not know how the [Diebold] system operates in an election and he further identifies the assumptions that he used to reach his conclusions. In those cases where these assumptions concerning operational or management controls were incorrect, the resultant conclusions were, unsurprisingly, also incorrect."
The conclusion of that thought (Score:5, Informative)
And the report itself continues:
Re:The conclusion of that thought (Score:2)
It's at zero, but it shows that Diebold simply cut & paste the most favorable text, even when the next sentence said that its efforts weren't "good enough".
Good news! (Score:5, Funny)
Faux News election night:
"And the results are in for the popular election, Jane"
"75 million votes for..wait.. who the fuck is Lawrence Lessig?"
"I would say he's our new President, Steve."
Electronic Voting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Electronic Voting... (Score:3, Insightful)
> if implemented properly, could revolutionise governance in general - pity it's being so badly implemented thus far.
I think "revolutionise governance" is exactly the problem most of us are worried about.
Re:Electronic Voting... (Score:2)
A clearer recipe for hell I don't think I have ever come across.
That isn't "governance." It's mob rule.
At least tyrany by the few and powerful is stable and at least leaves you with some idea of what not to do to avoid getting put up against the wall.
KFG
Re:Electronic Voting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Feh. And other words of disgust. One of the main purposes of the constitution, and the bill of rights, is to avoid the problem of "tyrany of the majority", while simultaniously allowing free and democratic government.
Certainly a free for all democracy, without any sort of "No, you can't use the government to do this" would cause problems. Democracy, in and of itself, is not sufficient. But we have more than just a democracy, and so does every other first world nation. By explicitly limiting the government's power, and by making those limits quite difficult to change, things work quite well.
What we need is more accountability, less secrecy, and greater transparency. A government of a few tyranical types tends to have a half-life of around 30 to 40 years, and when they collapse (and they always do) its not pretty. Look at the Soviet Union for an example of this.
Re:Electronic Voting... (Score:4, Interesting)
You do understand that in a number of polls the "people" have been shown more than willing to completely renounce Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
And, of course ( here comes Godwin's Law), Hitler was voted dictator for life in a democratic election.
KFG
Re:Electronic Voting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, yes and no. Hitler was voted dictator in a democratic election where armed thugs kept things going smoothly for him. Same as Mussolini was. It's one of the halmarks of facism: elecitons that are controled by threat of violence.
So, I'll have to disagree with your conclusion that too much democracy was what allowed Hitler to become a power.
Re:Electronic Voting... (Score:4, Interesting)
And of course fear and thuggery has never been a deciding factor in an election in America and could never happen on a national scale.
Because, well, because this is America, God Bless Her, everyone.
Right now America is broken. Most of it doesn't even know it's broken, even though every time Ashcroft opens his mouth more fascist hate spews out of it.
Why is it broken?
Because the voting public has already refused to use their democratic rights inherent in the Constitutional system to prevent it from becoming this broken.
In fact, most approve of it.
KFG
Re:Electronic Voting... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I'm just too cynical.
I'd personally like to log onto a secure website (I mean NSA type secure), select the issues I'm interested in (business, privacy, computers/internet, etc), and by default have a list of 5 "daily votes" related to my selected topics come up for me to vote on. Let everyone have the same. This removes a boatload of bureaucracy, makes government abide by the people, etc.
Then, IMO, it'd be a good idea to have government funded public debates in every community that anyone can attend. I akin it to Slashdot: a community debate is going to have lots of absolute retards, but I'll hear at least a few ideas and points of view that I hadn't considered for any given issue. On top of that, I'll hear from a number of folks who know more about an issue than I do. Most disagreements in my experience aren't based on judgement, but on information and communication. An open community debate would seem to be a better solution to this problem.
[end ramble]
Can anything be done about it? (Score:2)
Re:Can anything be done about it? (Score:2)
True, that's the way it should go according to the Constitution. We've all seen how well the Constitution is followed over the course of history though.
Re:Can anything be done about it? (Score:2, Interesting)
I work in the public safety field, we sell integrated dispatching and records systems to cops. I busted my ass working 80 hour weeks for about six months to complete a rewrite of the records system. It worked exactly like it should, it was completely intuitive and followed police procedures to a T.
Then I go out onsite to a client in california, and dipshit politically appointed top cops fuck t
Re:Can anything be done about it? (Score:2)
That's a bug. Your system should be smart enough to know that the respond-to address doesn't have to have any relationship at all to the caller's address...
Then I go out onsite to a client in california, and dipshit politically appointed top cops fuck the whole thing up. They wa
Re:Can anything be done about it? (Score:2)
I've designed systems that have needed large amounts of data entered in a short time, and I've had to use those systems to enter large amounts of data. Reaching off the keybord can kill data entry speed. What the operators do with their hands when they have time to take a break has absolutely nothing to do wit
Re:Can anything be done about it? (Score:2)
does the public know or care? (Score:2, Insightful)
She's done a fair amount of research on electronic voting systems. [notablesoftware.com]
Typical... (Score:5, Insightful)
The meme for the 21st Century seems to be "if your product is faulty, abuse IP laws to squash anyone who mentions it", rather than, say, fixing the damn problem.
Re:Typical... (Score:5, Insightful)
They should submit it to chillingeffects (Score:2)
+2 Insighful on the MQR standard (Score:2)
Dead on. If this isn't a case of the DMCA being misused I don't know what is. Have you contacted them to suggest it?
-- MarkusQ
How many precincts in CA use Diebold? (Score:5, Insightful)
With a broad field of candidates splitting the vote, and the field-leader taking the race, small margins could easily swing the election - which means a small number of compromised precincts could swing the election.
And with no human-readable audit trail, if you thought the stink over the Florida Presidential results was bad you ain't seen NOTHING yet.
Re:How many precincts in CA use Diebold? (Score:2)
Re:How many precincts in CA use Diebold? (Score:2)
Re:How many precincts in CA use Diebold? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's not odd if you consider that the ACLU is owned by one of the political parties.
Hint... Did the ACLU sue when the US Coast Guard found several ballot boxes floating in the San Francisco Bay after the last election?
Re:How many precincts in CA use Diebold? (Score:3, Offtopic)
So Bob Barr [foxnews.com] finally switched parties and became a Democrat? Good for him!
There won't be any stink at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There won't be any stink at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Make every candidate in one county get 31337 votes?
Diebold is aleady screwing California. (Score:5, Interesting)
There was an article on the Blackboxvoting.com site about how time stamps on files found on the Diebold FTP site indicate that Diebold downloaded vote counts DURING an election in Santa Barbara (??) county. For those who are unaware, it is against the law to count votes before the polls close.
So... part of the evidence suggests that employees of Diebold BROKE THE LAW by counting votes before the polls closed. No wonder Diebold wants to keep things secret.
So... this brings up a question. If I obtain a document indicating that a company broke the law, can that document be suppressed by saying it's copy righted? If so, that's a BIG problem.
Re:How many precincts in CA use Diebold? (Score:2)
Riverside and Shasta use a non-Diebold touch screen system.
7 counties (San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Clara, Solano, Sacremento, Sierra, and Mendocino) use punch card ballots.
Source [calvoter.org]
Undprecedented!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
"The thorough system assessment conducted by SAIC verifies that the Diebold voting station provides an unprecedented level of election security." (emphasis mine)
Unfortuantely, in this case, blackboxvoting is quite wrong, and Diebold press release is entirely correct. You see, the word "unprecedented" doesn't necessarily mean "good". It means "without precedent". The level of security offered by these voting machines is most certainly "without precedent".
Auditor Weighs In (Score:5, Interesting)
We are f**ked.
I really am an IT Auditor for a living and this is exactly the kind of work I do (although I mostly work for Utility Companies like water or electricity) and I know how these reports are created. There is HUGE pressure to "build assurance".
What that means is that you find an risk that is not addressed by a suitible control - and try to find a control - something, anything, that you can call a control to cover that risk. That's all fine and good, but what it means is that the risks that actually make it into the report are the really big, bad, completely unaccounted for ones. Put another way, for every risk that gets in, three didn't that a normal person would have thought should have.
Long and short, I write reports like this for a living and this is way, way, way worse than it looks.
This is very scary: but... Diebolt will lose (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, your voting software has more holes than swiss cheese. We are willing to help you, but there are some requirements you must follow.
1) your voting machines must have a printer attached
2) the votes must be counted electronically, optically, and by humans
3) if the printout doesnt match whats on screen, then remove the machine.
4) the paper ballot is the final record.
Look let the computer science community improve your software. We all want the election to go through in an error-free way. No one wants a florida to happen again.
But, if you fight this tooth and nail, you will have no fiercer enemy. Ignore the Slashdot nation at your own peril
Re:This is very scary: but... Diebolt will lose (Score:5, Insightful)
I rather think the Republicans aren't all that worried about a "Florida happening again". After all, it did get a Republican into the oval office didn't it...
It's odd though, speaking as a Canadian who has always though that although not perfect, the US electoral system had a fair number of checks and balances, it absolutely blows my mind that this sort of un-checked corporate crap isn't being stopped in it's tracks.
It's like 9/11 gave the politicians and big business license to do whatever the hell they want to with your entire country and the economy, and they're screwing it up at a simply astounding rate. "Patriot" take-away-your rights acts, a court denying a "do-not call list" that 50 MILLION people want for the benefit of a few telemarketing lobbyists, big companies trying to patent even the most trivial of ideas... Where does it end?
I mean, this latest info about a company making machines to support democratic elections that has no "unalterable record", easy bypassing (or complete lack) of database passwords, and executives talking about just printing "system check" on the screen without any actual checking being done because the electoral regulations require a full system check before the system begins recording votes.
Frightening, absolutely frightening...
N.
Re:This is very scary: but... Diebolt will lose (Score:3, Interesting)
I came to Lithuania, and my students asked me why I came. I told them "because America has fallen". Nobody believed me.
Anyhow, immigration screwed up my papers, and I had to go back to America to reapply for entry. On 9/11, I was on a flight Warsaw-JFK. The towers fell -- but still it wasn't obvious to most that America was fallen.
I think it's becoming obvious to more
Diebold would rather fix the election than lose. (Score:3, Interesting)
Printers are cheap and totally NOT the issue. How much does a couple of thousand printers cost? A million bucks with a fat markup? Chicken feed for these people.
They will make a heck of a lot more money by rigging elections and putting people in office who will perpetuate the scam. Diebold also sells a lot more things to the government than voting machines.
Not any more... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not any more... (Score:2)
Why not hand-count? (Score:5, Interesting)
Federal elections in Australia with a population of 20 million are run this way with no problem.
Before you say, "but America has many more voters", well, they can also have many more vote counters.
Re:Why not hand-count? (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly, these 'volunteers' are unacceptable. Maybe hand counting would work if the government subcontracted counting to a company which charged hundreds of millions to employ counters at minimum wage, and keep the rest for shareholders.
Re:Why not hand-count? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why not hand-count? (Score:2)
Re:Why not hand-count? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with this line of argument is that with machine count it becomes a matter of bribing one person: the one in charge of the machine...
This is why transparency is important. It really doesn't matter whether the ballots are counted by people, machines, or trained chimps, as long as the process can be viewed, verified, and checked by any concerned party (including individual voters) it will work quite well. When only a select few are allowed to see, verify, etc, the process than those select few can, and will, be corrupted.
An open source system, which produces paper receipts, looks like the only real option.
If these things are used in election 2004... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not just "they messed up my vote" screwed, but entire-election-results-legitimately-contested screwed.
The problem is that they're raising the margin of error by an unknowable amount. No matter which party wins in the 2004 Presidential election, the loser will easily be able to argue that the voting system was highly flawed and vulnerable to foul play. It will be a replay of 2000, except worse.
Using a system that's known to be insecure for national elections... it's just a guaranteed disaster. We'll have another election settled in court, and the populace of the U.S. will become even more polarized.
Re:If these things are used in election 2004... (Score:2)
Getting to the site (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, you could have...just before this article went up!
Really, only one possible reason (Score:3, Insightful)
And these men ARE fascists people, in every sense of the word. You think there would be any "open source" after that? This administration has already made little noises about Linux and BSD being "hackers" operating systems, there have been several years worth of propaganda about "freeware" being something only criminals use to steal and sabotage. You can damn well bet that it would be outlawed, or at least, brought under private control of some sort where it would be rigidly controlled.
Can you say heil SCO? Whether or not they actually have a claim, which they don't, it would only take a few lines of obscure law written into some other peice of legislation to change all that. It would be nothing for the fascists to declare something to be criminal or subversive and use that as an excuse for a major crackdown on the information industry.
But nobody really cares, as long as they can have their Hummers and Porches and Rolex watches.
Re:Really, only one possible reason (Score:2)
Maybe not (Score:2)
Yeah, we COULD go there, if the site hadn't been slashdotted to hell.
Help the Electronic Voting Machine Project (Score:5, Interesting)
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 move the development of the demo along.
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).
Just remember... (Score:2)
and you who bitched about punch cards... feel pretty smart now, do you? at least with punch cards, the only thing stopping you was the moron voter.... now, we have the moron system running things.
holy crap... New Zealand, here i come.
I doubt it (Score:2)
You could go to the blackboxvoting.com site, now you have to wait a day for them to recuperate.
"But you can still go to ... blackboxvoting.com" (Score:2)
Blackboxvoting.com slashdotted (Score:3, Funny)
Er, well, you used to be able to. Not anymore, now that Slashdot got its teeth into it.
To: Diebold (Score:2)
I love your work. Please contact my buddy Karl R. about a repeat in Florida in 2004.
Thanks
"Tex"
sms-voting's the go... (Score:2)
<voice type="radio" disposition="overexcited">
Lines are open right now boys and girls, to go to war with iraq, just sms 'war' to 1800 votenow...to say no to the war, and vote george bush out of the whitehouse, sms 'screw bush' to 1800 votenow
</voice>
How cool would it be...you screw up in govt, within 30 minutes you get your marching papers and the 'wildcard' entry gets a go.
Maybe a better way.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah that's it... (Score:2)
No I'm serious, it's been working so well for SCO and the RIAA why not try it here. After all its only democracy thats at stake.
I don't know about you but I trust them more already.
Machine voting not the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
A system where votes were printed to a machine-readable piece of paper, verified by the voter, then deposited in a secure box, would be simple and secure. By printing votes you create a self-verifying system -- voters can check their vote is correct, and an audit can easily verify that votes were recorded as voters intended. Management of the printed records would be just like the ballots we already are using, but without the reliability problems of punch-card systems. Tallying could be done mechanically, as a barcode could accompany the printed text.
The whole system is very simple. Even if they just used an ATM style of security (printing to an internal paper log) they would be far superior to Diebold. But using logic is difficult in this case, because Diebold is clearly making absurd claims, and it's difficult to refute absurdity.
EVM 2003 [sourceforge.net] is trying to create a complete open source voting system (not just machine). I wish them the best of luck. This is more than just philosophy about copyright and IP, it's the defense of democracy from those that want very much to take away even the slight accountability that currently exists. They've already made it into office with one fraudulent election (2000), and very possibly kept control of congress with another (2002, with many states being won with unverifiable votes that didn't match up with predicted results).
The Twilight of Democracy in America (Score:2, Insightful)
Public Beta Test in 13 Days... (Score:5, Interesting)
The horrible thing is, that this is really far below the general public's radar. I find it extremely amusing that we had a court battle over how reliable punch cards are, when electronic voting may be far worse.
The problem is that the general public is very computer illiterate, and have been pretty much been conditioned to accept bugs and viruses as normal. At the same time, strangely, computers seem to be viewed as infallible.
It is very importaint for Democracy that people are able to be able to see and verify that their votes are counted.
My previous experience with the Diebold machines left me more puzzled than anything. Where was my vote counted, on the card that I put in the machine, in the machine itself, or both? Were the votes transmitted via phone, wireless, or physically transported to a centeral location? I don't know for sure, and I'm sure regular people off the street were more puzzled. Then again, maybe the thought never crossed their mind.
Diebold's CEO is a big Republican Donor (Score:5, Insightful)
"in August, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, is a major fundraiser for President Bush. In a letter to fellow Republicans, O'Dell said that he was "COMMITTED TO HELPING OHIO DELIVER ITS ELECTORAL VOTES TO THE PRESIDENT NEXT YEAR."
The internal memos from Diebold [scoop.co.nz] (they get referred to from Salon) show a shockingly cavalier chief engineer 'managing' the security concerns of various clients, steadily resisting the idea of even password protecting the .mdb file (.mdb file!?!) so that just anyone couldn't overwrite audit logs. Nothing overtly political in those memos, though, thank God.
Still -- how does it affect the credibility of any (new, or old) voting system for the people overseeing it to be acknowledged partisans? Imagine a Florida 2000 in which there were no physical records, and in which the systems that counted votes were frighteningly insecure and had been programmed by a company headed by a partisan figure. We already had more than enough partisan elements there -- the brother who happens to be governor, the Supreme Court justice who has a wife on Bush's transition team, the different standards for counting absentee ballots in different counties, and so on.
The thing about those memos is, they really show the states to be one more relatively uninformed client of an IT company. They'll buy the FUD of the Diebold person as long as he sounds assured enough, you know? Even when it comes to something as obvious as "I double-clicked the file of votes and it opened with no password, is that bad?" Which is all the more reason to be sure you're dealing with someone who has no conflict of interest, right?
Re:Diebold's CEO is a big Republican Donor (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't have a big problem with this part of it. He resisted the idea of password-protecting the .mdb file because it wouldn't do any good. His explicit argument was that you'd still have to give the password to the election officers and the results would be just as insecure as before. What he didn't mention was also that it doesn't take much [lostpassword.com] to reverse-engineer the password out of an .mdb file anyway.
I'd be more concerned i
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Diebold (Score:3, Interesting)
These sales people wouldn't, perhaps, have represented the machines as somewhat better than "substandard," now would they?
No, the states aren't forced to buy them, but "just trying to make a living" don't cut it.
How else is the same sentiment sometimes phrased? Oh, yeah.
"A girl's got to make living."
KFG
Re:Personal reply from Bev Harris.... (Score:2, Interesting)
VERY scary shit.
About Diebold:
http://www.bartcop.com/diebold.htm
About ES&S:
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm
A Diebold machine is hacked, step-by-step and an election rigged here:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S0006 4
Congressman Rush Holt's bill:
http://holt.house.gov/display2.cfm?id=6282&type=Ho me
Contact your Congressman here:
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item =2754
Re:Paper + pen (Score:2, Insightful)
Convenience, which leads to real representation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Normies from Maryland just aren't concerned (Score:3, Interesting)