New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected

TechDirt is reporting that the New Jersey e-voting troubles are even worse than originally thought. Apparently the "minor bug" which was supposed to be fixed is still not corrected, suggesting that Sequoia still doesn't know what is going on. "Ed Felten has received a bunch of 'summary tapes' from the last election in New Jersey, and while many of them do have the vote totals matching up correctly at the end at least two of the summary tapes simply don't add up, meaning that Sequoia's explanation of what went wrong is incorrect. Given how often the company has denied or hidden errors in its machines, despite a ton of evidence, we shouldn't be surprised that it was inaccurate in explaining away this latest problem as well. However, we should be outraged that the company refuses to allow third party researchers to investigate these machines. It's a travesty that any government would use them when they've been shown to have so many problems and the company is unwilling to allow an independent investigation."

Here's the link that should have been in summary

Here's the link that should have been in the summary, [freedom-to-tinker.com] to the post in Ed Felten's blog, Freedom to Tinker, complete with images of the paper tape in question.

Re:Here's the link that should have been in summar

I think the scary part is that the small error is definitive proof that the voting machines are wrong, but that there is no mention of a method in NJ for the poll workers to go back and check out that there really were X number of votes for each candidate.

The thing that is important for the integrity of the election is that there is a verified paper "receipt" that the voter has checked and dropped into a box that can't be tampered with.

Sure, the summary print outs are "nice" for instant access to the results, but there isn't really a good reason not to have a bi-partisan check of the paper records at the end of the day.

After 5 or 6 election cycles are validated with this computer/receipt method, then we could start to put more trust in the machines... but Diebold and their ilk have proven time-and-time again that they cannot design voting machines that stand up to scrutiny of even the simplest checks (like Felten's comparison between total votes and reported number of total voters).

What bothers me

What is really bugging me is that computers are great at counting and adding. ITS WHAT THEY DO! The fact that nobody can come up with a believable voting machine tells me something really rotten is going on. I could understand if they were having troubles with advanced CFD code making or some other complex process where the real-world results are not completely understood, but these machines are basically taking $NumVotesCast +1 many many times.

Minor Big

Make up your mind.

Same story, different day.

This is getting old. Nobody in Government wants to say anything against this, as they might just end up on the wrong side of an upset vote. The people don't care as long as the majority doesn't feel disenfranchised. The minority can't do anything, because the majority doesn't care.

Bullsh!t

The minority can't do anything

And there's your excuse for you and the ~4 moderators let sleeping dogs lie.

It's partially your fault for not participating. Own up and get involved in the voting process.

Or, maybe you'll have another excuse for doing nothing.

I hate bigs.

Apparently the "minor big" which was supposed to be fixed is still not corrected

I guess I'm a dork for enjoying the second-order kind of humor in that statement.

where are the whistleblowers?

So many stories have "the company did this" or "the company denied that." Aren't these companies made up of people?

I can imagine an effort by management to cut corners and maximize profits at the expense of quality and company reputation, but is there really no one in a position of first hand knowledge who knows better?

With the multitudes of avenues for anonymous communications, it's not like I'm asking someone to put their job on the line. (Not that it would be too much to ask. There are people out there risking their lives in a very real way to protect this country. You won't even risk a job you most likely hate anyway?)

Re:where are the whistleblowers?

You won't even risk a job you most likely hate anyway?

Whistle-blower laws exist because companies don't exactly line up to hire such paragons of virtue and honesty.

Re:

Come on now, lets put this in perspective a bit, I am perhaps the least technically savy reader slashdot atracts on a daily basis, and even I could manage to throw a program together that would require little more than a 286 running dos that could ask peop

It's New Jersey...

...and, you know, the voting machines fell off the back of a truck - if you know what I mean - which is why the state was able to get them "wholesale". You got a problem with that? I got your warranty right here.

Re:

The fact that this problem is taking place in New Jersey should be disgusting and shocking...keep in mind we have the gambling sub-mecca of Atlantic City over here. What you might not be aware of is that the state government maintains strict controls on s

If only they really _had_ been stolen

the voting machines fell off the back of a truck .. which is why the state was able to get them "wholesale".

I get the joke, but..

One of the interesting things about the situation, is that New Jersey apparently does not own the machines. They neither stole nor bought them. They licensed the machines, and the terms of the license are what prohibits them from analyzing the flaws. Without the state signing a contract that prohibits them from auditing the machines, Sequoia would have had no muscle to prevent it, and Felten would have his hands on one by now.

Is it just me..

or does "worse than originally thought" define the daily dose of reality we Americans keep receiving?

Is +1 really that hard for a computer to do?

I think the number one reason people are suspecting corruption and election tampering is the idea that adding one (1) is somehow a complicated action to perform. And that is the basic operational notion behind voting after all.

But why aren't people outraged? I think it's because we, the people, don't believe our votes count anyway and so none of this comes as a surprise. There may have been a time when men with pistols and rifles might gather and demand a recount, but guess what? We don't have gun ownership any more... at least not the kind that we had in the past. And if a group of people with guns gathered together for just about any reason at all, I think the potential outcome would be easy to guess based on recent historical events.

I really don't think our votes count. They don't because of a variety of reasons prior to the ballot being printed. Independents don't stand a chance... even the people who are actually pretty well liked by most. The news media is incredibly biased. When debates are being held, lots of people are simply not allowed to even participate. Some states such as Texas even have laws that state you cannot participate in getting an independent on the ballot if you have voted in any party primaries. The end result is that we can "vote" for whoever we want... but the selection is more or less out of our hands.

If people really believed their votes counted, they would be outraged. The lack of rage is a pretty telling indication that the people aren't interested in voting irregularities in the least. If there were irregularities in their bank statements, their phone bill or their paychecks, they'd be outraged to the point of violence as is often the case when such issues occur. So if outrage is an indicator of how much someone cares when things go wrong, then I'd say people are more upset over [literally] spilled milk than they are over elections.

Re:

You get exactly what you put into your ~1 hour a year of effort. A government that is best-suited to work against your ideals. It's your fault. It's not some multi-headed hydra of wealth and political power running the show. They participate, you don't. Pe

I'm a little surprised...

that members of this site haven't started an open source project around developing an OS and maybe a basic hardware specification for cheap E-voting machines.

Considering how many people get upset every time some article like this comes up and the expertise many claim that this hasn't occurred to anyone yet. I'm no programmer (outside of incredibly simple perl scripts) so "I" couldn't do it but I can't imagine that members of the Slashdot community would do any worse than these asshats. Besides, even if they did do a crappy job it would be open source so that security hats could look through it and point to all of the bugs for fixing.

Re:I'm a little surprised...

that members of this site haven't started an open source project

You mean, like the Electronic Voting Machine Project [sourceforge.net] and OpenSTV [sourceforge.net] and the Voting Software Project [sourceforge.net] and the Open Voting Consortium [openvotingconsortium.org] and Blue Screen Democracy [sourceforge.net] and probably a dozen other projects?

One problem is that voting software/hardware has to be certified by the state. A ponderous, time-consuming, and expensive bureaucratic nightmare not particularly friendly to amateurs (or even corporations, unless there's a good prospect for vast sales).

Gambling Machines!

Someone made this comparison in an older post and i think it is key to making people see the point: gambling machines are required by law to go through a very stringent and thorough set of checks, including source code examination, in order to be certified for use. Why we don't do the EXACT same thing with voting machines is ABSOLUTELY beyond me. It makes perfect sense and it is insane that we don't. -Taylor

Nope.

Nope.

The difference between the two devices is one is gaming HUGE income generator for Government. In order to keep the poor schmucks at the poker machines, they contribute to the scheme by certifying the devices. Voting infrastructure is all costs and t

even they are buggy...

There have been a number of stories posted here and at Digg about payouts that were voided because of courts siding with casinos when they declared the winner only won because of a bug or the jackpot was wrong because of a bug.

So they aren't a great exampl

Well, duh.

You can't help fix elections if you allow the public to review your machines and code! Come on, people, don't be ridiculous.

BSOD

The first time I saw one of Sequoia's units was at a demonstration in Philadelphia about 3 years ago. At that time they were demonstrating a prototype as they didn't have the displays they intended to use. Half way through the demonstration, in true Bill Gates style, the device threw up that old familiar blue screen.
One thing to point out is that Sequoia, or at least some of the companies that it now owns, has a history in the voting machine industry. Remember those big blue mechanical booths with the sliding curtains? Those things were as inaccurate as hell.
The argument for paper is good, but in many elections there can be thousands of individual ballots in a single county. If you overcome the logistic hurdles, then you have the problem of people doing the counting of thousands of ballots and compiling that information. I've spent many election nights reviewing paperwork from precincts that was just wrong - didn't add up or was off by an order of magnitude. These weren't people trying to hedge an election; they just screwed up simple arithmetic.
I studied this problem for years from a security analyst's position. In my opinion, a print on demand, image, scan, and destroy solution is the only practical solution. Sorting and storing tons of paper just doesn't make sense. Recycle it. Use barcodes on the ballot, steganography in the stored image, and encryption in the scan record to verify the match of the scan and the stored image to the print at the polling place.
Let's face it, we have exactly what the original GW warned us about, a two party system where the political aristocracy selects the possible candidates based on the influence of lobbyists. Their machines are calibrated to select issues and positions to give a 50% bias within the uneducated masses.
As a Libertarian, all I can do is sit and watch in disgust. This not what our ancestors had in mind, but they only had (much less than) 0.3% as many ballots to count.

Re:

There's one point this indirectly makes, though... I think this illustrates incompetency rather than fraud. It is was fraud, they would add up.

Re:Man...

It isn't really all that screwed up. But we do have a few problems. First is that each state (province in most other countries) decide how to have their elections independent of the federal government. Then you have situations where someone demands that fraud happened because their guy lost and they aren't willing to accept that. So you get state governments wanting to figure out how to look like their going to do something to compensate for what really amounts to stupid citizens and here comes all the companies with plans to make them money.

So know you have politicians who think something needs to be done, companies lobbying them thinking they can make a buck, and when they do, it isn't enough, they have to cut corners, which then turns the same sour puss crowd that turns it into a We gotta do something again message that perpetuates the companies claiming give us more money and we can fix it.

The problem is that it is getting represented as worse then it is. There might have been a few problems here and there but the major ones you hear about are more or less citizen errors. Things like claiming disenfranchisement because someone passed out a flyer saying Vote on X day if your voting republican and vote on Y day if your voting for a democrat (ohio), people claiming disenfranchisement because cops are parked in the medium strip watching traffic 4 or 5 blocks away from a polling place, or that they couldn't figure out how to line up their cards properly and look to see if a hole was actually made on certain selections (florida). Now we have new jersey and Maryland where where Electronic voting seems to have made a couple of errors that would be somewhat par for the course if paper ballots where used anyways. But because it is electronic, it is receiving much more scrutiny.

In all, it isn't nearly as bad as it is being made out as. Still it isn't something that should be ignored either. The real interesting thing is that they areas having the problems seem to be more liberal in nature which is probably why you get the loud screaming if something doesn't go the way they hoped it would. (the perpetual underdog syndrome where we can raly the grass roots but claiming someone is mysteriously attempting to use the magic smoke in the decices to stop your vote from counting.)