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CNN Reports on Diebold 241

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i'll-vote-you dept.
An Anonymous Reader writes "CNN has finally picked up the story about concerns about Diebold voting machines. It's about time this made it into the mainstream media." If you're interested, here are a couple of related stories.
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CNN Reports on Diebold More

CNN Reports on Diebold

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  • And what exactly is the official, from Diebold ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06.email@com> on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:19AM (#7370838)
    explanation as to why there is no paper audit trail? Since that is the clearest, easiest, most obvious sore point, the first element to raise big, flappin' red flags with the most lay of lay-persons, what official explanation has Diebold come up with as to why there is no paper audit trail?

  • voting (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 56ker ( 566853 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:20AM (#7370845) Homepage Journal
    What are the problems with the current system of a piece of paper and an X? How would this new system overcome them? Most importantly, what extra problems would this new system cause? These are all questions that should be answered before any public money is spent on changing the way people can vote.

    • Re:voting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jameth ( 664111 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:25AM (#7370867)
      The problem is that Voting is done at the local level, not the national level, so the US as a whole cannot prevent electronic voting. As such, the US government should endorse a high-quality, open solution for the benefit of all counties which wish to use electronic voting.

      Yes, all those questions should be answered first, but we all know at least a couple states will go to electronic no matter what else is done.
      • They're hoping to try out e-voting and all postal votes in areas of the UK too. I think part of the reason behind this is a desire to increase voter participation by making it easier for people to vote. In fact the government introduced the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill last week. Here all elections are done the same way - I suppose if the government wants to change it they've got to bring in a new law. There are (currently) three ways to vote:-

        on the day at a polling station
        post
      • Electronic voting could be prevented at the national level as something that denies my rights as a citizen, etc. so that it would be allowed to be used anywhere in the country.

      • Re:voting (Score:2, Informative)

        by Just Jim ( 549769 )
        That's not correct. If the US couldn't prevent electronic voting, then the "Help America Vote Act of 2002'' wouldn't be able to specify requirements for "voting systems used in an election for federal office" See section 301 (pg 96 of the pdf copy I have.)

        Though the Diebold system seems to be in violation of 301

        (2) AUDIT CAPACITY.

        (B) MANUAL AUDIT CAPACITY.--

        (i) The voting system shall produce a permanent paper record with a manual audit capacity for such system.

        So I don't know how they're getting a

    • Re:voting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:42AM (#7370930) Journal
      What are the problems with the current system of a piece of paper and an X? How would this new system overcome them? Most importantly, what extra problems would this new system cause?
      I see electronic voting as a potentially useful supplement to paper-based voting. But no more than that, and certainly not a replacement.

      Casting votes should be anonymous (something that is easier to verify when using paper ballots). Every single step of the tallying process should be under the direct scrutiny of multiple persons, who wtach the process and each other. (preferably a representative from each of the stakeholders in the election). Only when John Q. Public can see with his own eyes that these conditions are met, is he going to be reasonably certain that his vote will not be used against him, and that the count is accurate.

      I do not see how we can ever achieve this when using only electronic voting. But technology can help in several ways:
      - Producing accurate ballots. Remember the last election for the US presidency? People complained that the ballots were unclear in some way. A machine can double-check with the voter, by displaying 'You have selected Candidate X. Press the Big Red Button to cast your vote for X'. Then, when the voter presses the red button, the machine prints off an anonymous paper ballot, which the voter takes and deposits in an ordinary ballot box.
      - Providing near-instant preliminary results, and serving as a double-check against the tally of the paper ballots.

      So yes, I see how machines can help. But the final and binding result must be the one obtained from hand-counting the paper ballots.
      • "Casting votes should be anonymous"

        Here in the UK each person entitled to vote has a number on the electoral register. This number is on their ballot paper - so it would be possible to find out which way they voted (in theory). I think this seems against the principle of a secret ballot - but it may be a device so that there can be checks in place against somebody voting twice - I'm not sure.

        " Every single step of the tallying process should be under the direct scrutiny of multiple persons"

        That's the way

    • Re:voting (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What are the problems with the current system of a piece of paper and an X? How would this new system overcome them?

      With the current paper system there are always dubious votes (e.g the X is misplaced, the punching machine does not make the hole properly, etc.).

      I think electronic voting should be used to create the vote on paper. The citizen chooses the candidate on the screen and the machine prints out a paper ballot which is put by the voter into the ballot box in front of the voting commitee.

      The com

      • Re:voting (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hazem ( 472289 )
        My question has been, "why do we we need to have one machine to do it all"? Why not two? One for producing a ballot, and another for counting.

        If Election 2000 is the impetus for change, we need to consider the actual problem. The problem wasn't counting the ballots, not really. It was the quality of the ballots was questionable and caused problems with counting.

        While it's inefficient, we should preserve the current seperation of voting and counting. A voting machine should assist the voter in produci
      • "With the current paper system there are always dubious votes (e.g the X is misplaced, the punching machine does not make the hole properly, etc.)."

        How bloody difficult is it to use a pen/pencil to mark an X ?

        And if the X is exactly midway between two choices, consider the ballot spoiled.
        • Actually, when I wrote that I was forgetting two groups of people: people with physical or visual disabilities. But I'm quite sure there are simple means which can be used to enable them to register their vote, without requiring any sort of electronic solution.

    • Re:voting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by An Onerous Coward ( 222037 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @11:22AM (#7371091) Homepage
      The problems with paper ballot voting are as follows:

      1) It's not sexy. High tech is sexy. Politicians want to appear "with it" and forward thinking. Continuing with paper ballots serves neither of those ends.

      2) It's not lightning fast. The major news media outlets want to be able to declare a winner before most people shut off their TVs at 10PM. It gives the viewer a feeling of closure. Waiting until 3AM for the numbers from Podunk, Iowa and surrounding municipalities does absolutely nothing for ratings.

      3) Paper ballots are auditable. The old joke that voting would be outlawed if it could actually make a difference is an exaggeration. The true purpose of voting is to give the American public a feeling that they chose things to be the way they are, but despite their best efforts, two percent of incumbents are still being thrown out. This represents a remote exploit in the system, which electronic voting can help close.

      I hope the problems with the current system are now clear to you, and that you will write your congressperson in support of Diebold and electronic voting.

      • Re:voting (Score:3, Insightful)

        by 56ker ( 566853 )
        1) I would never vote for a politician who was that shallow or obsessed with technology.

        2) There are plenty of things in life that aren't fast - that's why patience is a virtue. ;)

        3) Well maybe that's the true purpose of voting in the States but here in the UK you vote to choose a respresentative eg councillor, MP, MEP etc - or over an issue - joing the EU, devolution.

        I don't have a congressman as I'm not an American citizen. I've never even been to America. So the chances of me writing to an American co

      • Re:voting (Score:3, Informative)

        by Jardine ( 398197 )
        2) It's not lightning fast. The major news media outlets want to be able to declare a winner before most people shut off their TVs at 10PM. It gives the viewer a feeling of closure. Waiting until 3AM for the numbers from Podunk, Iowa and surrounding municipalities does absolutely nothing for ratings.

        We recently had an election in Ontario. This involved the paper ballot system. Polls closed at 8pm and results were complete enough for the media to call it a Liberal Party majority government in less than an

    • HAVA and voting errors. (Score:5, Informative)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @11:28AM (#7371111)
      The HAV act (help amerca vote), created a land rush by mandating a minumum number of touchscreen voting machines by 2004. The stalking horse provision in the bill is that blind people cant use most voting systems without assistance, and people in wheel chairs have difficulties as well. Noble motivation yes, but the cure is worse than the problem.

      This land rush was led by diebold with a first-to-market system. they acheived this by using off the shelf components and OS and DB. THe system has not proven reliable or safe. I wont regurgitaete the accusationsof fraud, except to mention that any time elections differ by 6 sigma from poll results someting reeks. Unfortunatley other companies ESS and Sequoia tried to keep pace. the ESS systems at least have the benefit of actually failing to boot so often that florida has abandoned them! THe Sequoia system is the best of the lot but still has its own flaw. At least the sequoia people, when pushed, seem to be trying to respond to the demand for voter verified balloting.

      The good news is that After pressure by california's santa clara county (19 million dollar
      contract), Sequoia voting system has agrees to implement (at no cost) a
      voter verified, recountable, paper ballot in addition to the touch
      screen systems.
      (see here [verifiedvoting.org] )

      Already the House of representatives has a bill pending ( The Voter
      Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003) that will require
      all touch screen voting systems to be voter verifiable.
      (see here [house.gov] )

      Indeed the entire country of brazil, which has 400,000 electronic
      voting machines has decide to replace them with voter verifiable
      systems.
      (see here [notablesoftware.com] )

      A 95 page caltech and MIT study surveying many years of voting reports
      that among all voting methods, the method with the single largest
      average error rate is electronic voting, which is senate and
      gubenatorial elections has almost TWICE the error rate of optical scan voting. This means that by enfranchising blind people we disenfranchise far more people. a bad trade.
      (see here [caltech.edu] page 21 )

      Indeed reality is much worse since that's just an average, since
      electronic voting errors tend to be both non-random and clustered in
      catastrophic events.

      For example, Bernalio county in Albuquerque reported 48,000 voters went to the polls
      but only 36,000 votes were registered on Sequoia voting systems.
      (see here [abqtrib.com])

      Similarly, many votes were lost in the latest election in florida
      counties using Sequoia voting systems. Janet reno is investigating
      cases where heavily democratic counties registered ZERO votes for any
      democrat. Sequoia systems has presented Los Alamos FALSE information
      of Seqouia systems. For example, they claimed it did not run on
      windows OS. In fact WinEDS their database collection system is based
      upon microsoft OS, and uses a Microsoft-based SQL DB, and the password for
      this system is "password" (really!).
      (see here [69.13.2.49] )

      You can in fact obtain this very minute on CD rom a program which will
      break into any diebolds MS ACCESS based database and change results then erase all log
      entries of the intrusion. It's easy to imagine that SQL can nbe attacted too either by security hoiles or user admin mistakes in the table grants.

      Sequoia's Glowing reviews in florida, santa
      clara and Lousianna counties are somewhat marred by the fact that the
      Luosianna county agent who reviews them highly is now under indictment
      for a payoff from seqouia, like wise the santa clara and florida
      registrar have both been (publicly) paid off by the
  • It's about time that our media decided to note what is essential to our way of life. Voting is the foundation of America, fair voting in particular.

    And, I know, there have been countless rigged elections.

    Nothing compares to how bad electronic voting is. I just hope this provokes them to create an open solution.

    • Re:About Time! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @11:01AM (#7371000) Journal
      I just hope this provokes them to create an open solution.


      You hit the nail on the head. This is perhaps one of the most important aspects of elections. But consider what 'open' means in this context.

      The entire process of casting and tallying votes should be open, so that every voter knows what happens in each step of the process, or that he at least can be sure that other people are keeping a proper eye on the process on his behalf. Only then will the majority of the voters have faith in the accuracy of the results of the election, even if they do not necessarily agree with the outcome. This is a key aspect in any functioning democracy.

      The system of paper-based ballots is very open, in the sense that the ordinary voters can understand the process. They can also understand that the counting is fair, and that every person involved is watched by at least one other person. In most democratic countries, voting offices are staffed by representatives from every party taking part in the election.

      Those who think open-source software will make electronic voting open, think again. Electronic voting is way too complicated for ordinary folks to understand. Grandma isn't going to inspect the source code. Which trustworthy person can do this for her, and inspect everything without oversights? "Of course electronic voting is safe, grandma, you can inspect the source code yourself! Oh, well you can take my word for it being safe... no... no, I have not inspected all 100.000 lines of this code, not for every single machine that was used in the election! But I am sure someone has... oh, no I can't be sure that they didn't overlook something.".

      No, open-source electronic voting does not make for open elections.
      • no, but it *is* a valid step in the right direction.

        And I mean, come on, seriously. Its not like the code can be all that complicated... I bet a first year cs 101 student could write a decent electronic voting system, outside of the drivers needed for the interfaces. its not exactly a hard concept. It could even be replaced with a simple shell script.

        there shouldnt be any question that we should need a paper trail.

      • Re:About Time! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Sri Lumpa ( 147664 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:26PM (#7371433) Homepage

        You say: "They can also understand that the counting is fair, and that every person involved is watched by at least one other person. In most democratic countries, voting offices are staffed by representatives from every party taking part in the election."

        This is why Open Source Electronic Voting would be safer, because even though your Grandma and even you would not be able to check all the 100,000 lines of code it still would be available for the different political parties to check themselves and THEY have a good incentive to make sure the system is fair, or at least not biased against them, with the opposite party making sure it isn't biased against them... resulting in a system that isn't biased against anyone; i.e. a fair system.

        Also note that I said safer instead of safe because you have to account for human error and the like, but it still would be a step forward to what is used today.

  • Diebold and Civil Disobedience (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cft ( 715198 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:23AM (#7370859) Journal
    Civil Disobedience is a great example of how democracy should work.

    A law made by "the people" is made to represent the best interest of "the people" in general. It should be fair and in proportion, and that should be the basis for obedience to that law. Making theft illegal is in everone's best interests, because it should protect your posessions.

    When a law is out of proportion, unjust, or in any other case plain wrong, it is no longer in the best interest of the people in general, and thus should be void. "The people" ignore (break) the law, because they in general do not agree with it.

    The ability for the public to act this way should prevent government agents from making laws for their own benefit (corruption). The public has a means of protecting their public interest.

    If the voting system is corrupted, it's in the publics best interest to expose this. I'm not aware of who leaked the memos in the first place, but linking to material available on the web should not be punished IMHO.

    I think it's utterly wrong to place responsibility of the counting of votes in the hands of a commercial enterprise, not if they don't give full and in-depth insight in the process, and allow auditing at every level at any time. Not because I'm an open source zealot or "liberal", but because I trust a commercial enterprise as far as I can throw them, and that's not very far...

    • Unfortunately... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by I Want GNU! ( 556631 )
      We can't do civil disobedience when we go to the polls. The only type of civil disobedience we can have there is not voting. And when the Diebold board of directors gave $200,000 to the Republicans over the last election cycle and Wired reports that they made an unauthorized patch with Georgia's software before the Republican upsets in 2002, that makes it seem rather fishy...

  • That was a great quote to leave unchallenged: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <roy AT stogners DOT org> on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:23AM (#7370861) Homepage
    David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold Election Systems Inc., one of the larger voting machine makers, said "the fact of the matter is, there's empirical data to show that not only is electronic voting secure and accurate, but voters embrace it and enjoy the experience of voting that way."

    This is the point where a bad reporter starts typing up the story, and a good reporter starts asking about smartcards reporting -16,000 votes. At least the AP is looking at the right story now, so hopefully eventually the right person will be looking at it.
    • Seriously - this article didn't even mention the memos or the C&D letters.

      Are college students the only ones willing to stand up to these guys?

    • Re:That was a great quote to leave unchallenged: (Score:5, Informative)

      by Davak ( 526912 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:34AM (#7370901) Homepage
      You wanna see the crap these guys discuss privately?

      http://www.why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebold.ht ml#excerpts [why-war.com]

      "Elections are not rocket science. Why is it so hard to get things right! I have never been at any other company that has been so miss [sic] managed." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/announce.w3archive/20011 0/msg00002.html ]

      In response to a question about a presentation in El Paso County, Colorado: "For a demonstration I suggest you fake it. Progam them both so they look the same, and then just do the upload fro [sic] the AV. That is what we did in the last AT/AV demo." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/support.w3archive/199903 /msg00098.html ]

      "I have become increasingly concerned about the apparent lack of concern over the practice of writing contracts to provide products and services which do not exist and then attempting to build these items on an unreasonable timetable with no written plan, little to no time for testing, and minimal resources. It also seems to be an accepted practice to exaggerate our progress and functionality to our customers and ourselves then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not meet expectations." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/announce.w3archive/20011 0/msg00001.html ]

      "Johnson County, KS will be doing Central Count for their mail in ballots. They will also be processing these ballots in advance of the closing of polls on election day. They would like to log into the Audit Log an entry for Previewing any Election Total Reports. They need this, to prove to the media, as well as, any candidates & lawyers, that they did not view or print any Election Results before the Polls closed. However, if there is a way that we can disable the reporting functionality, that would be even better." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/rcr.w3archive/200202/msg 00051.html ] (emphasis added)

      • ""I have become increasingly concerned about the apparent lack of concern over the practice of writing contracts to provide products and services which do not exist and then attempting to build these items on an unreasonable timetable with no written plan, little to no time for testing, and minimal resources. It also seems to be an accepted practice to exaggerate our progress and functionality to our customers and ourselves then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not meet expe

    • David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold Election Systems Inc., ... said "the fact of the matter is..."

      I just wonder why the reporter felt that spin from a PR drudge was worth placing in the article. The fact of the matter is that the phrase "the fact of the matter is" should set off the BS detector of anyone reading such a statement.

    • Re:That was a great quote to leave unchallenged: (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JInterest ( 719959 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @11:58AM (#7371249)
      This is the point where a bad reporter starts typing up the story, and a good reporter starts asking about smartcards reporting -16,000 votes. At least the AP is looking at the right story now, so hopefully eventually the right person will be looking at it.

      One major media outlet HAS noticed the problem -- Fox News Network.

      http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,100152,00.html [foxnews.com]

      Here's a quote: "JOHN GIBSON, HOST: Talk about fishy. Just wait until the next election. A lot of folks will be holding their noses around the new electronic voting machines (search). There's already a stench of suspicion surrounding some of last year's elections which used touch-screen machines made by Diebold (search). They may have been tampered with after they were certified. David Allen is co-author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century. Mr. Allen, that is today's big question. Were electronic voting machines suspect in the Georgia elections?" That's a transcript of an October 14 show, and they had an earlier story on October 6 talking about fears of tampering.

      http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,99241,00.html [foxnews.com]

      Looks like CNN is behind the ball on this one -- again. As for the AP -- look, you are more likely to get action based on the FNN stories than anything the AP prints. FNN has a lot more viewership, and frankly, a lot more viewer trust with ordinary Americans.

      What we need isn't more news stories, we need more letters from concerned voters to their election boards and local representatives. This is a problem that will be fixed on the state or local level. Let's write those letters folks.

    • Worse than that (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mattdm ( 1931 )
      Didja notice the sub-heading that that quote is under? "Critics mistaken", it says. Pretty unbiased, huh?

  • Just stick with what we've got.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Infernon ( 460398 ) * <infernonNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:24AM (#7370864)
    Why not just stick with the old punch-card method?
    I'm wondering if all of those dangling/hanging chads were caused by equipment that had seen better days. Think about how many years those machines served us well. No one here is a stranger to the fact that equipment wears out and gets old. On the other hand, the voter also has a responsibility to make sure that the card is punched to the best of their ability. If your choice isn't legible and it's by no fault of the machine (noted by the individual at that moment) that vote should be discounted.
    With touch screens, you're just complicating it. That just my opinion though...
    • On the other hand, the voter also has a responsibility to make sure that the card is punched to the best of their ability.

      I've use punch card voting systems, and the problem with them is that you get almost no feedback after you've punched the card. The card itself is hidden under a template full of little holes (which in the case of a butterfly ballot, don't quite line up with the names off to the sides), and it's hard to see down into those holes to tell if you actually punched the hole. There isn't muc

    • On the other hand, the voter also has a responsibility to make sure that the card is punched to the best of their ability. If your choice isn't legible and it's by no fault of the machine (noted by the individual at that moment) that vote should be discounted.

      Why should the vote be discounted? We have a machine right there that can read the vote and determine if it is valid. If it isn't valid, you don't eat the vote, you tell the voter "Hey, you fucked up your vote, try again!"

      It's simple, it's obvious

  • machines (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:25AM (#7370868)
    Machines will never be appropriate for something this simple - and I say that in a cost effective paradigm.

    The only way to be sure that a machine isn't fucking up or being abused is to print an audit trail..... which would use paper so any cost effectiveness goes out the window. Not even counting the cost of expensive machines etc.

    The other reason to oppose this is to stop voting from moving anywhere outside of the polling booth (which is where the logic of electronic voting leads) -- because that will just lead to massive fraud, hacking, vote buying, and husbands standing over their wives and children during voting time to make sure they vote for "the party" (which shall remain unnamed).

    it doesn't stand up;
    technologically (security).
    economically (it's madness)
    or democratically (it has sinister implications, vulnerabilities and adds nothing other than a contempt for the average voters understanding of how ballots work)

    So, from a gnu/linux and general tech lover, fuck off technology we don't need you here.

    • Re:machines (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 )
      I disagree. Machines/Paper each have their advantages:

      Machines: tallying fast and in a properly designed system more precise.

      Paper: auditing is intrinsically better: the voter can see the physical representation of his vote, and if the ballots are properly tracked and handled provide a link back to the intent of every (anonymous) voter.

      It follows the best possible system is one where the voter marks his vote on a piece of paper and this paper is read by a scanner and tallied.

  • Lack of Detail (Score:5, Interesting)

    by netsharc ( 195805 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:26AM (#7370872)
    Too bad they don't mention how lacking Diebold's security is, e.g. how easy it is to open Diebold's Access DB and add users/passwords, to change vote results. I remember reading somewhere, if the machine is in "election mode" and you insert a blank memory card, the machine asks you if you want to format and create an admin card out of it, and does so when you click/touch "yes".

    This paragraph annoys me the most though,
    David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold Election Systems Inc., one of the larger voting machine makers, said "the fact of the matter is, there's empirical data to show that not only is electronic voting secure and accurate, but voters embrace it and enjoy the experience of voting that way."

    They embrace it huh? They enjoyed the experience? What empirical data, the one he pulled out of his ass? That's something he'd probably enjoy. Interesting how CNN headlines the last section with "Critics Mistaken"

    • Re:Lack of Detail (Score:5, Funny)

      by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:50AM (#7370949)
      They embrace it huh? They enjoyed the experience? What empirical data, the one he pulled out of his ass?

      The customer satisfaction data and security data was collected by polls using a Diebold machine with respectively 18 quadrillion members of the general public and 6 million computer security specialists as respondents. Ninetynine point eleven percent of respondents said they have "complete and utter faith in Diebold Election Systems Inc.", while minus three quarters of a percent agreed with the statement "I do not trust Diebold, and I am a servant of Satan".
    • Chances are, it will take some group hacking a few voting machines to stuff the ballot for a no-name third-party candidate before anyone cares enough to demand better security.
    • Well, sure, I absolutely bet that the average person they "polled" at the election on whether they thought the new touch screen method was a good one, thought it was.

      Its the crap we hear afterwards, the contemplation and realisation that there is no Paper trail, and the info found in those diebold memos, the articles about the -16000 gore votes, and all the other scary crap is when people start to question.

      I dont trust the current electronic voting system what so ever. I *do* think that they could make a
    • Is this like "embracing and enjoying" the experience of prison rape?
    • Yeah, that annoyed me. Although at least your average person should be bright enough to question whether they can have empirical data that someone *enjoyed* the experience. (or perhaps be savvy enough to question whether voting is something one is SUPPOSED to enjoy on anything but a moral level)

      The problem, of course, is this newsbite media format. The article had to spend so much time just setting up the issue that there was no room for anything besides "Yes it is!" "No it isn't!" Maybe they (or Time

    • Re:Lack of Detail (Score:3, Informative)

      by cpeterso ( 19082 )

      Too bad they don't mention how lacking Diebold's security is, e.g. how easy it is to open Diebold's Access DB and add users/passwords, to change vote results.

      Not just the security of Diebold's voting machines, but the security of Diebold the company. Their web site was hacked, revealing private code and documents. If they can't keep their own secrets secret, how can we trust them to keep OUR secretes secret? And why in the world was their code internet-accessible?!!
    • Yes, I used a Diebold Touch Screen Voting Machine, and I really enjoyed it. It was almost identical to another activity I enjoy which also involves a computer screen and touching things. And the end result is so similar.

  • Benfords Law ? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    As far as I can tell - from various news reports - there have been a number of suspicious results. Suspicious in the sense of pointing to software flaws as opposed to corruption.

    A number of results have thrown up the same odd set of figures a number of times.

    I just wonder if this isn't a place where Benfords Law [wolfram.com] could be applied ?

    ac

    • Benfords law applies to quantities that depend on some scale, which is ultimately arbitary (for example, distance measured in 'feet' and so on). For a large enough sample, and the right sort of data, the distribution of first digits should not depend on which measuement scale you are using, ie the probability distribution is scale-invariant - and therefore a power law.

      How does this apply to votes? The obvious unit of measurement (ie. units of '1 vote') is not scale invariant?

  • Misleading (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Davak ( 526912 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:28AM (#7370883) Homepage
    This article doesn't have anything to do with the previous Diebold evilness...

    This article is more about the general problems with touchscreen voting in general.

    I think touchscreen voting is a good thing!

    Yes, it will be less secure. Yes, it makes everybody nervous note to have things on pen and paper... However, you can say that about everything that is now done electronically! Heck, it just paid all my monthly bills online this am. My granddad would never trust "these new fangled machines" to send/accept his money.

    There will be problems with new machines... it's good we are talking about them now. Hell, I just hope that this is another step toward online voting. Woah... talk about security problems then.

    Davak

  • It's not the same (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JPelzer ( 202626 ) * on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:29AM (#7370886)
    Apparently, the poster didn't actually read the article... It doesn't mention the Diebold memos about how easy it is to modify results. The article gives the reader the idea that those opposed to electronic voting machine are all technophobes that don't 'get' how great these new machines are.

    In my opinion, this article does nothing to help. Not that it matters. My state managed to count its votes correctly back in 2000, and they agreed with the majority of the nation. Touchscreens aren't what Florida needs. They need better-trained officials, and apparently a better graphic designers... And better voters, judging by their electoral votes back in 2000... Just kidding.

    Man, I love computers. But they sure are a pain in the butt.

    • Re:It's not the same (Score:5, Informative)

      by hysterion ( 231229 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:39AM (#7370919) Homepage
      The article gives the reader the idea that those opposed to electronic voting machine are all technophobes that don't 'get' how great these new machines are.

      Not really. It quotes someone from MIT saying, "The computer science community has pretty much rallied against electronic voting. A disproportionate number of computer scientists who have weighed in on this issue are opposed to it."

      • Which struck me as a VERY odd thing for someone at MIT to say, given that the sentence could be read as suggesting some sort of tech-head conspiracy just as easily as meaning that the intelligentia say the booths are bad.

        Why didn't he say something a bit more solid about WHY the comp-scis are against it?

  • Newsreek too (Score:4, Informative)

    by barzok ( 26681 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:33AM (#7370899)
    Both the print and online editions of Newsweek [msnbc.com] have an article about the systems as well.

  • Hilarious (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TenPin22 ( 213106 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:38AM (#7370915) Homepage
    Computer Scientists are usually:

    "Use a computer to do it. Its 3 million times faster, can read your mind and do your ironing!"

    And the non geeks respond:

    "Nah, its too hard, expensive, dangerous and unreliable."

    Whereas in this case it seems we can't disuade them from using it.

    I wonder how long it would take to label these electronic voting systems as a joke if one were allowed a circumspect examination. Of course you won't be able to get anywhere near them because the developer company will claim security when the only real security is being completely open about it.

  • E Voting (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dolo666 ( 195584 )
    I really hope E-voting becomes a trustworthy standard. With the right people, this could become a reality. It would enable us to move democracy into a new era, where the public could vote on each policy.

    Download the power of government to everyone, so that fairness becomes the new standard. Inform the public based on true logic, not stupid logic, like "if you vote for this, you will be good looking."

    E Voting could allow us to venture into true democracy, where the people actually run things, instead of th

    • Democracy is Evil (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      We are a Constitutional Republic NOT a "democracy".
      I don't want to live under the tyranny of the whims of "the people" voting on every little thing that they know nothing about.

    • Re:E Voting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <roy AT stogners DOT org> on Sunday November 02, 2003 @11:03AM (#7371009) Homepage
      I mean... if you BANK online, what's so bad about voting online? Seriously.

      If I bank online with a trojaned computer, and the trojan user electronically transfers money from my account, the bank has a record of where that money went which they and I can see (and investigate) at any time, and which will be investigated as soon as I notice a discrepancy in my balance or review my next bank statement.

      If I vote online with a trojaned computer, then the trojan just has to get inbetween me and the voting server once, and if it does so, it's succeeded. I can't check my individual vote against the county tallies; nor will I be receiving a printed statement of my vote in the mail shortly afterward. There's no sure way to discover "Hey, someone screwed up my vote!", and no easy way to trace any discovery to the perpetrator afterward.

      And needless to say, there will be lots of trojaned computers. How many internet-sweeping worms and email trojans do we get on the average year? Probably enough to throw a lot of elections.
      • Then how about a system that your votes are anonymous UNTIL you check your vote.

        Example:

        A voting place already knows a lot about you by the time you get in there.
        1: You have to register to vote, which includes name and address.
        2: You visited the precint so you're physically close to here.
        3: Many states require you to announce your alligences (R, D, other..)

        All the voting places dont know about you is the link to the votes you did and your name. My idea is to make these e-votes semi-anonymous.

        Everyody wo
        • "Many states require you to announce your alligences (R, D, other..)"

          Not one of them.

          They might record that you voted in a party's primary, but that's quite different from requiring you to announce your allegience or anysuch nonsense.
          • For primaries, many of them do. The reason is that you could vote for the worst of the opposing party and the best of the party you support, so you must choose which party to "support".

            For the major elections, this is not done. However, you're a fool if you dont vote every chance you get. What little power we control is still power.

    • Re:E Voting (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ricosalomar ( 630386 )
      I'm not trying to be contrary here, but I'm not sure the banking corollary works in this case.

      If I make a transfer online, and it doesn't show up in the banks system, than I can call the bank and complain. I can say, "Hey, on date x I tranfered $y and it didn't show up."

      Now they can either credit my account or tell me to fuck off.

      But with Evoting, I have no way of knowing that my vote was or wasn't logged. So I don't even have the option of being told to fuck off.

      Furthermore, since the only record of

    • Re:E Voting (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      Are you really well informed enough on every issue that is debated by your government to vote intelligently? What about your fellow countrymen? I certainly don't believe I am, which is why representative democracy was invented; you select people who hold broadly similar opinions to yourself, and trust their informed judgement.

      The change we need to make is not allow more ill-informed people to vote on policy, but to make it easier for groups of like-minded people to select a representative, irrespective o

  • machine voting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Potor ( 658520 ) <farker1@gmai l . com> on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:45AM (#7370935) Journal
    according to this site [joecitizen.org], 80 percent of american votes are cast by machines built by one of two corporations (Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and Diebold Voting Systems -- both described as 'Republican'). Although this concentation does not directly preclude democracy, it does certainly make it rather vulnerable.
  • We know that purely electronic forms of voting are no good (even if they e.g. added a recipt printer to a diebold machine, how would that help?)
    We also know that other forms (punch cards, lever operated and others) can cause mis-interpretation or confusion.
    And we know that the old ways (i.e. paper balots, like in australia) are too expensive (mainly to transport, store, audit, track and count all those votes, remembering that the US has a lot more people than australia and a lot more poling booths plus the
  • IMHO, the only real change will come after someone hacks the units and Mickey Mouse or OBL wins the presidency or some other position. Until then, Joe Public is going to keep trusting what he is told. Of course, whoever does this will probably be branded a terrorist and given 465 years in prison.

    If you've learned anything from history class, it is pretty clear that what the government tells you probably isn't the best for you, but is the best for them. It's sort of like how the guv'mint gave out gas masks

  • An electronic election machine solution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rongage ( 237813 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @10:59AM (#7370983)

    If everyone if so concerned about verifibility of the election results, then give them what they want. This seems so obvious to me...

    Use a machine (e.g. a touchscreen based computer) to generate a paper ballot. This paper ballot should both contain a human readable printout of what you (the voter) just voted for, as well as a mag-stripe encoding of the same. Use the same basic technology as used in the airline industry - human readable on the front, machine readable on the back. These printed, mag-stripe coded ballots are then given to the kind people at the balloting place where it is deposited into a locked steel box for counting later. No electronic counting on-premesis. No "internet connections". Just consistent, countable, checkable, permanent and persistent results.

    The results are electronically counted thanks to the mag-stripe encoding. If someone or some organization wishes to contest the count results, there is the printed version on the front of each card to give an actual, unmistakable account of that vote.

    The ballot generating machines would be there strictly to generate a "valid" ballot. Valid in this sense meaning checking that someone isn't exceeding the number of votes per race allowed (e.g. not voting for more than 1 person for the presidential election). The machine would also generate a "review" screen before the ballot is actually printed to allow the voter to make sure that all their votes were properly tabulated.

    The whole point of this mindless exercise is to produce consistent, unmistakable results, right? No more "hanging chads" or partial punch-thru's, right? No more presidential election decisions by the Supreme Court, right?

    • Yeah, but that system would be readable and largely immunte to simple forms of tampering with the process itself. You could still strike thousands of "convicts" and minorities from the voting record, but you couldn't set up the ballot so that what looks like a vote for Gore is really a vote for Buchannan. And you couldn't have a voting machine report -16,000 Gore votes.

      Remember, Diebold is 100% Republican owned and operated. While the Democrats may use similar dirty tricks, that's not the issue here. The

    • The ballot generating machines would be there strictly to generate a "valid" ballot. Valid in this sense meaning checking that someone isn't exceeding the number of votes per race allowed (e.g. not voting for more than 1 person for the presidential election). The machine would also generate a "review" screen before the ballot is actually printed to allow the voter to make sure that all their votes were properly tabulated.

      The whole point of this mindless exercise is to produce consistent, unmistakable r

  • A story... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gr3y ( 549124 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @11:04AM (#7371013)

    not the story.

    CNN didn't mention the leaked internal memos, the cease and desist letters, or the refusal to remove them from the internet.

  • The issue is about secrecy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @11:15AM (#7371049) Homepage

    From the CNN article [cnn.com]:

    The complaints echo those that came up when lever machines were introduced in the 1920s, and again when punch cards came on the scene, said Doug Lewis, an expert at The Election Center in Houston, Texas.

    The complaints about lever machines in the early 1900's did not come from mechanical engineers. Instead, they came from groups of people who did not understand these "confounded contraptions". The election officials could, or could allow anyone to, examine the insides and workings of these machines. There was no secrecy about it.

    Ironically, the complaints about punch cards have, in part, come true. This is why we are doing this rush to computer voting in the first place, because the punch card system in Florida (and as it turns out, elsewhere, too) showed the faults in the system. But despite the flaws in punch card systems, there was no secrecy; they could be examined and the flaws could be seen and understood.

    Both systems above were not only "open systems", but also had various audit trails incorporated. While not perfect, punch cards could be manually counted if machine counts were suspect. The flaw with Diebold and other electronic voting systems isn't that they are electronic, nor is it even that they might be connect to, or through, the internet. Instead, the flaw is that unlike their predecessors, these systems are closed, and have no audit trails.

    Unlike past systems, where the concerns were raised by people that didn't know much about the technology they were based on, the issues being raised about electronic voting systems are being raised by people who fully understand this technology, the flaws that are inherint in the technology itself, and the methodologies needed to compensate for such flaws, and ensure reliable and correct operation despite such flawed technology. All the voting systems have flaws, and they always will. What sets the past systems apart from what vendors are trying to push on us today is that those past systems were known to be flawed to a certain degree, and they could be examined to verify that. What vendors of electronic machines are asking us to believe is that their systems are absolutely perfect and that no one ever needs to "look inside" to verify anything, and that no audit trails, and no recounts, will be needed.

    • The complaints about lever machines....

      There was no secrecy about it....

      Mod parent up.

      I was all set to write a rapid-fire response to CNN, and then I saw parent post.

      This post so clearly summed up my feelings, that it inspired my complete response to CNN.

      I hope you (parent) don't mind that I included your post in my response, I didn't claim it as my own.

      My response to CNN:

      Dear sir or madam,

      This is in response to your recent story, entitled "Worries grow over new voting machines' reliab

  • Lever machines are NOT the same (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dachshund ( 300733 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @11:20AM (#7371082)
    The complaints echo those that came up when lever machines were introduced in the 1920s, and again when punch cards came on the scene, said Doug Lewis, an expert at The Election Center in Houston, Texas. "We were going to find that elections were manipulated wildly and regularly. Yet there was never any proof that that happened anywhere in America," Lewis said.

    Yes, but the design of those lever machines is available to election officials, and can be examined carefully prior to every election. Is Diebold willing to offer those assurances to election officians? Say, open sourcing everything and allowing officials to take it apart and reassemble it before the election?

  • I have a strategy for massive voter turnout (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Froze ( 398171 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @11:36AM (#7371142)
    using an electronic voting system with an audit trail that is also a tax credit coupon.

    When you go into a voting booth you get a card that has the time that the last person voted (this allows individual authentication of the voting record, more on this later).

    You insert the card into the voting machine and, if you want a tax credit, your ssn. The time stamp plus ssn is one way hashed and the hash is printed on your card. The card number is then your tax credit authentication code.

    At the time your card is printed (vote cast), another blank card with just a time stamp is generated for the next voter.

    The voting machine records to two seperated databases, call them db1 and db2, the following;
    db1( My_Candidate++, My_timestamp )
    db2( hash( ssn, timestamp ) )
    The db's writen to a permanent media, like maybe cdr, dvdr, or paper, or whatever.
    db1 is used to tally the vote, it is also made publically available, db2 is sent to the IRS for tax credit validation purposes.

    And last, a law is passed that forbids any entity from combining the two db's (this is the weak link, still have to think about this). In fact, no one but the IRS is legally allowed to have a copy of db2. Also, the oneway hash needs to have a crack effort barrier that is computationally huge (like a couple of minutes on an NSA machine ;-).

    Pros
    The tax credit ensures massive turnout
    If you are paranoid about giving your ssn out, then you don't have to, but you don't get the tax credit either.

    You can look at the publically available voting record to see that no votes were inserted between yours and the previous voter.

    Cons
    Possible breach of anonymous voting (but this also possible by other means, like bugging or social engineering).
    • No.

      ANY system, no matter how well-intentioned, which allows the voters to walk out with a notarized proof of their vote is bad. Because that leads straight into vote-buying. Not that it doesn't happen already, but it would happen on a far larger scale. (check out the history of English election politics, especially in the late 1800s)

      And besides, your system brings up another issue - do we WANT 90% voter turn out if half of those people are throwing their votes away? Voting for people at random? C

  • The story didn't mention the company's bias towards one particular party. When I did a paper on electronic voting for a class earlier this year I found the company has strong Republican ties and the chief executive (Walden O'Dell) of the co. has personal connections to Bush/Cheney. The company donates almost exclusively to Republicans. O'Dell had a fundraiser at his house for Cheney which raised $500k earlier this year, has donated and raised money for the RNC and is a leader in Ohio with helping Bush with

  • Not all computer or voting hacks are the same (Score:4, Interesting)

    by raque ( 457836 ) <jimwall&mac,com> on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:14PM (#7371340)
    In reading all these comments on touch screen voting I've never seen the issue that bothers me most raised.

    There is a constant refrain that any system can be hacked. Sure any voting system can be compromised but the how is all important. It you're going to stuff ballot boxes you need to have a bunch of people do it and they have too have physical access to the boxes. How many boxes can one person stuff, 1? 10? Many more opportunities to catch them in the act. In a computerized system one person can hack the whole election creating any results that that one person may want. This is IMHO a totally different magnitude of issue.

    This sort of problem also favors the incumbent wildly, who has all the access to any part of the system they may want.

    Just because any system can be hacked doesn't make all hacks the same. Some are worse than others and some favors one person or group more than others

  • In January, 2002 the State Elections Board approved two closed source touch screen voting systems, the ES&S Votronic DRE and the GBS Accu-Touch EBS 100 DRE.

    This spring I raised the system integrity issues with the Board, and persuaded them to revoke [state.wi.us] the certifications.


  • Our top voting official opposes touch-screens (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday November 02, 2003 @12:46PM (#7371531) Homepage
    Warren Slocum [warrenslocum.com], the registrar of voters for San Mateo County, California, has taken the public position that any system without a paper trail is unacceptable. He has a web site [warrenslocum.com] and blog devoted to "verified voting".

    San Mateo County uses big paper ballots with mark-sense readers at every polling place. The voter marks the ballot with a black marker, then slides it into the ballot box, which scans it as it winds it in. The ballot then drops into a big locked container (the container lid is the scanner). At the end of the election, all the scanners are read out for a quick count, and all the boxes go, still locked and sealed, to a warehouse in case a recount is needed.

    This works quite well.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • "The computer science community has pretty much rallied against electronic voting," said Stephen Ansolabahere, a voting expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "A disproportionate number of computer scientists who have weighed in on this issue are opposed to it."
    I'm puzzled by the use of the word "Disproportionate." Does this expert think that only disenfranchised minority voters care about the accuracy of elections?
  • In an effort to see if there was anything more on CNN about e-voting (and to boost related traffic to give the impression that people are interested in the story), I searched CNN for "Diebold". The results were even more frightening. Remember those web-enabled ATMs that run Windows [slashdot.org]? Guess who makes 'em? That's right. [cnn.com]

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