Ohio Study Confirms Voting Systems Vulnerabilities 91
bratgitarre writes "A comprehensive study of electronic voting systems (PDF) by vendors ES&S, Hart InterCivic and Premier (formerly Diebold) found that 'all of the studied systems possess critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election'. In particular, they note all systems provide insufficiently protection against threats from election insiders, do not follow well-known security practices, and have 'deeply flawed software maintenance' practices." Some of these machines are the ones California testers found fault with last week.
Right... "election insiders"... (Score:1, Interesting)
Whether you set up the process with electronic voting or you use old fashioned paper slips, someone somewhere can either cause votes to disappear or have
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Instead of contracting out to private businesses, whose best efforts are, apparently, pitifully inadequate, why don't they hold an open, international competition? (Wasn't the AES algorithm the result of an open request?)
Re:Right... "election insiders"... (Score:4, Insightful)
And second, yes, a meteor striking or a truck crashing the voting site would certainly crush a voting booth. But since it's as likely as me getting abducted by aliens, I'm actually willing to take that risk.
I'm honestly amazed how people keep using incredible horror scenarios as an excuse for something not working (or, in case of terrorism, being necessary), without even considering that it's so unlikely that it doesn't matter at all. There is a minuscle chance that you die in the shower from lightning or some other freak accident, does that mean you don't shower anymore now?
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We've been blessed with a populace who is generally honest enough t
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because it is already happening in other countries and chances are that it is and has been occuring here too.
we didn't overlook the prob
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I've personally worked for the Alaska's Division of Election, so this might not hold true for the equipment used by other states but:
The major problems with the system as it is are: 1) poor physical security 2) risk of sabotage of code and components [corruption] 3) no paper trail to verify votes 4) code must be/remain open source to make sure the voting machines are not doing something shady without anyone's knowledge etc...
1) All TSX (touch-screen machines) are always under lock and key when not being fielded. When they're out in the wild they are under constant supervision of either staff or a group of volunteers (who as far as the staff knows don't know each other - integrity through numbers approach)
2) Only the staff has the a key to open the machine's controls. Said staff is so busy wi
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That's rather messed up, IMHO. I had no idea that this changes from state to state.
Re:Right... "election insiders"... (Score:4, Insightful)
And you have routines in place for dealing with what happens if votes are lost in an accident, such as re-doing the election.
This isn't difficult stuff, it's been worked out centuries ago.
Vote Boycotts (Score:2)
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Run sentence, run!
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The only step in the voting process that must n
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Still, your scenario reminds me of a story my grandfather once told me. He was living in Florida at the time and registered as a Democrat. The person at the poles told him that his name wasn't
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[The elderly don't] care who wins the election, so long as their retirement benefits aren't touched.
The elderly are the only people who actually vote in this country! The AARP is a huuuuuuge lobby and anyone who wants to get elected to any position anywhere—particularly the presidency—has to cowtow to them quite a great deal. That group also includes a lot of veterans, which need constant placating as well. Never ever ever underestimate the elderly vote because those people have the highest turnout of any demographic.
With all due respect... this is news? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:With all due respect... this is news? (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, there's a reason why NH's system is so good. Heck, I love a state government where a man I'd gotten to know as an elevator operator was elected to the state House.
I love me some paranoia in the morning (Score:1)
Voting machines are never networked, so there's no way for such a virus to propagate.
The votes aren't tabulated on a computer until after the paper ballots (which the machines spit out after each individual vote) are counted against the electronic counter. In effect this electronic counter is more of a guide-point for the paper counters, so if your results deviate from it you probably need to recount the paper ballots.
One of the great features of the machines used in my office is that it allows even th
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The machines we have don't have USB ports, and don't run on any popular OS. They are never plugged into each other (directly or indirectly). There really is no way for such a virus to spread across these machines.
Wrong! (Score:5, Interesting)
It is perfectly possible to make pencil-and-paper elections secure against the malpractices you suggest, as well as many others that you haven't thought of but the election designers certainly have!
Even if the entire system were corrupt, in terms of every single person involved in running the election being involved in a conspiracy, there's no way they could hide what they're doing from observers.
Now, in civilised parts of the world people don't always make use of all their observation opportunities. For example, in the UK the candidate can watch the ballot box being sealed, make a note of the number on the seal, and check that the same seal is still on the box when it is opened later at the counting hall. But we don't bother - we trust the officials, and we've been working for something like 17 hours with another 4 or 5 to go so we take the opportunity to have something to eat whilst the ballot boxes are being shifted around. But, if there were any suspicion that the election officials tampered with the boxes in their cars, we could do this check.
Oh, and as we all said goodbye to each other when leaving Kosovo the first time we were all calling out "bye, see you in Florida!", including the Americans.
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If we encourage black voters in the South to remember to vote on November 10 "Election Day", and they somehow end up missing the election on November 7, have we not corrupted the system?
Or if we have a company of 10,000 employees who were all pretty underpaid and "encourage" them t
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What would the impact be of a carbomb going off in one of the vehicles transporting the ballots? If a district were known to be heavily in favor of a certain candidate, wouldn't the destruction of those ballots negate their votes?
Let's say there is an accident, not a bomb. The car catches fire, the votes are destroyed. How many votes are in this car? 500? 5.000? I suppose there won't be 50.000 votes in it. Let's say 5.000 votes are destroyed. I think that's a high number (but I may be wrong). You could simply calculate if this would change any of the results. Probably it won't matter if all those votes of this one accident went to candidate A or B. And not all those votes will be for one candidate alone. So if those votes couldn't
You're exactly right. (Score:1)
We keep track of voters by their polling place, so in the unlikely event that a box of votes from a certain polling place were to be blown up, abducted by aliens, or what have you, we would simply contact the voters of that polling place to recast their ballots. Yes, it really is that simple.
This... (Score:2)
This is the exact reason that a take-home election reciept is a bad idea. Which is why most voting systems don't have it... not just the tyranny of the employer, but also the undue influence from peers & family. (Can you imagine how long I'd be sleeping on the couch if the wife knew who I voted for la
Various frauds ... (Score:4, Interesting)
What would the impact be of a carbomb going off in one of the vehicles transporting the ballots? If a district were known to be heavily in favor of a certain candidate, wouldn't the destruction of those ballots negate their votes?
Depends.
Round here, in a local election there are three ballot boxes for my ward, and they are probably transported to the count in two cars. The loss of any one of those boxes would clearly invalidate the election. Whether the election would have be run again in the entire ward, or just in the area(s) for the lost box(es) I don't know, but I think "the entire ward" would be a good guess.
For a parliamentary election, there are around forty ballot boxes for this constituency. If one box were lost, and that box held, say, 1,500 ballots, and the count of the remaining boxes gave someone a majority of, say, 4,000, then the result would be clear without that box. Otherwise I expect that again the entire election would be re-run.
(A car transporting me to a polling station, of which I was in charge, in Kosovo broke down. I finished the journey sitting in the back of the van that our armed guard was driving. A novel experience for a Brit - most of us can go through life never seeing a real live gun, and having one a few way away from you is a bit weird.)
Publicity for false election day
Dunno about the American South, but round here that's something I'm pretty sure would go through the courts, with a re-run of the election a possible outcome.
Company pressure
There's no way you can have an "informant watching the polls" in a propery run election. Everybody in the polling station needs to have a good excuse
Now, this sort of buying / forcing votes is possible with postal votes - your crooked employer could lean on his employees to request postal votes and then hand over the ballot papers. There isn't an answer to this, which is why we (my party) really don't like postal votes very much, other than for the traditional good reasons (housebound etc).
(This sort of employer pressure was thought to be widespread in the Ukraine election that was re-run because of the various complaints. I went to the Boxing Day re-run (a novel way to spend Christmas away from my family) and we were told that the employers hadn't applied any pressure the second time round, basically everybody involved had decided to stop trying to cheat and to hold a clean election.)
if we can't actually verify that each vote is registered
Do you mean voters who don't make it onto the electoral register? Yes, that's part of the wider system rather than polling day security. There's two theories about natural safeguards here:
(a) candidates will make efforts to get everybody onto the register
(b) actually it probably doesn't matter that much, as someone who can't be bothered to get onto the register is quite likely also somebody who can't be bothered to vote, so who cares.
And there are plenty more ways of gaming elections you haven't thought up yet
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Could learn from Venezuela (Score:3, Interesting)
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I've heard that Venezuela's military commanders promised a coup d'etat if Chavez tried to ramrod his wildly unpopular socialist reforms down the nation's throat, but you'll notice that the vote count released to the public indicated that the margin of defeat was under 1%. That's what's called in the political industry "saving face
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Here in America, after the coup of 2000 by the Bush Crime Family with the aid of those Opus Dei members of the Supreme Court, we can only fantasize about honest elections.....
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Wait,... you're saying that there are more than two types of people in America? The walls of this binary paradise are crumbling! And outside is a disturbing ternary landscape, where "dunno" is a valid opinion, and you always have exact change. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS PLACE!
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Which isn't so far fetched. The two parties become more and more similar with every election, to the point that I slowly have difficulties noticing the difference. Which in turn makes sense, from their point of view.
Imagine you have a liberal and a conservative party (for the sake of an argument, since I don't want to start a discussion whether X is a Rep or Dem issue. As I stated above, I somehow don't really see a difference i
What about us who aren't represented? (Score:2)
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It reminds me of the old Hungarian joke from the times of Communism. Back then, Hungary brought up something stunningly progressive for elections: Two candidates. Sure, both from the communist party, but there were actually two ca
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In a two-party system, what's the point of voting at all?
Well Voting for a third party is almost certainly not going to get the third party candidate elected. However the two main parties tend to be fairly evenly matched and the third party vote going to either of the other two parties could swing it either way. using some random numbers say 45,000 vote for party A and 40,000 vote for party B and 8,000 vote for party C. Party B could win this seat if the Voters for party C would vote for party B instead.
In other words both Party A and Party B have to take into a
Re:Computers just aren't ready (Score:4, Interesting)
Vote for your third party candidate as #1 then you can avoid "wasting" your vote by ranking the others. If your #1 choice doesn't make it, then at least you still have a say in the remaining candidates.
Most importantly, everyone can see how many people voted for your third party, since nobody will vote for a more popular party as #1 thinking it would be wasted.
=Smidge=
We have the technology to do this right.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Trillions of dollars are transfered via electronic means, perhaps even more than that if you define a time line.
The only difference here is the anonymity of the voter, who they voted for. Where security dealing with verifying a qualified voter before they vote and that they only vote once, should be no more an issue as when it was when it was all paper.
The fact that this electronic voting problem exist at all, but also full scope across all machines tested really does id
Re:We have the technology to do this right.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, how should I notice whether my vote has been counted correctly or whether it has been twisted around?
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Now, how should I notice whether my vote has been counted correctly or whether it has been twisted around?
I think this is equally applicable to paper voting...on an individual level at least. When I vote, I mark a piece of paper and put it in a box - once it's in the box, there is no link back to me (except maybe fingerprints). That's the last I ever see of of my ballot. I personally have no means to verify that the piece of paper I submitted has been counted correctly, or if my vote was altered in any way.
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I personally have no means to verify that the piece of paper I submitted has been counted correctly, or if my vote was altered in any way.
Not true.
If you really want to, you can stick around and watch the ballot box, see when it is sealed, watch when it is opened and observe the counting process. Note that you'll probably have to make arrangements in advance for the latter steps, but you can do it. In fact, it's normal procedure for representatives of parties and/or candidates to observe in this way.
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Bingo! But a proper paper trail will make election fraud much more difficult.
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When you undertake a transaction with an ATM machine, the machine is just the conduit to the bank. You're trusting in the bank's paranoia about money to keep everything square. And the bank provides sufficient paperwork and even a dispute resolution process in case of a discrepancy. The ATM does not balance your account nor even decide if you have enough money to withdraw, the bank does. Before Diebold set about fixing^H^H^H^Hmaking voting machines, they made ATMs.
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Or not. But hey why worry about pesky details. You think the ATM hardware vendor could come up with something as horrible and cheap as the voting machines? GES bought a few companies and eventually was bought by Diebold.
Bob and Todd Urosevich are the criminal brother who are behind ES&S and Diebold which are responsible for counting 80% of all the votes in this country. HAVA funneled $3.9 BILLION dollars into a handful of these v
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ATM machines are very reliable, but nevertheless they malfunction all the time. That is why they have electronic or sometimes even paper journals. If an ATM gives you to little money your bank can check your receipt, the journal and the amount of money still in the machine. In most cases you should get your missing money.
I don't think ATMs are a useful comparison for electronic voting machines, mostly due to the anonymity requirements.
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I don't trust ATM machines.
I do trust the very sophisticated checks and cross-checks that are built into the banking industry that would prevent any systematic corruption of ATM machines. So I'm comfortable using them, and I do so a few times each month.
Voting machines are just a pretty face. There are none of the kinds of checks and cross-checks behind them that make the banking industry work. Companies like Premier (aka Diebold) have shown deliberate resistance to incorporating any of those kinds of m
Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see what all the fuss is about. When your only choice is between the Democrats and the Republicans, who gives a crap whether the machine you vote on is rigged? It's like being offered a choice of getting thrown in a shark tank or a piranha tank.
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I'll leave it up to the reader to decide which party is more aptly described by a tank of sharks or a tank of piranha.
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Power Corrpution Apathy (Score:3, Insightful)
re:power corruption apathy (Score:3, Insightful)
i think it's pretty clear that american manufacturers of e-voting devices are either unforgiveably incompetent or deliberately introducing devices with obvious non-security. i'm not sure which prospect i find more troubling, but to be honest, what i find even more troubling is the fact that the media largely appears to be ignoring the
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Actually, that's one of the major difficulties. With an election, an audit trail must have an important property that isn't required by a financial system's audit trail: The audit trail must not expose a voter's actual votes.
With financial systems, there's no serious problem if the auditing system allows the bank employees to see the numbers in a customer's records. There are even situations where it's considered
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Several reasons:
1) Your boss learns that you didn't vote the way he told you, so you're out of a job.
2) The local gang of thugs learn that you didn't vote the way they told you, so they come around and break your childrens' kneecaps (or yours, if you don't have any children).
3) The local banker learns that you didn't vote the approved way, so the next time you apply for credit, you're turned down.
4) The politician you didn't vote for wins, and he a
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Don't Worry Guys! (Score:3, Funny)
Voting is a joke on basic principles! (Score:2)
The concept of a "winner takes all" system is that the losers must suffer the tyrrany of the winners. How is that so much different from a dictatorship? You are still under tyrrany, and in some ways it's worse -- it's the tyrrany of the majority, which means of course it's much harder to effect changes since you'll have the majority a
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Yeah, several your "founding fathers" where slave owners...
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Yeah, several your "founding fathers" where slave owners...
Heh. (Score:1)
Buckeyes are so dumb anyway (Score:2, Funny)
Root cause of election system flaws (Score:1, Informative)
Insecure voting machines? Forest for trees... (Score:1)
Aren't the voting results returned by phone? And isn't the Administration even now working diligently to get the big Telcos immunity for doing anything they ask them to do - or anything they think of themselves that the Administration likes?