Help Black Box Voting Examine ES&S Software 197
From Bev:
"ES&S 'Unity' central tabulator software.
Software stash: three zip files --
http://www.blackbox1.org/ems.zip
http://www.blackbox1.org/un5.zip
http://www.blackbox1.org/Unity.zip
User Manuals for ES&S software can be found here:
http://www.bbvforum s.org/forums/messages/2197/2864.html
This is the ES&S central tabulator software, the ES&S counterpart to the Diebold
GEMS central tabulator software. No source code, sorry, and no software for the
precinct machines. This is reportedly one generation back, but from what I'm
told has significant similarities to the new stuff. I would appreciate it if
you can provide me with feedback on your impressions after looking at it. You
may want to Slashdot it or whatever.
Best,
Bev Harris
Founder
Black Box Voting
Re:Open that source up! (Score:1, Interesting)
Legality (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I won't ask... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see any mention of this on the real blackboxvoting.org site, and blackbox1.org was just registered anonymously a month ago through "Domains by Proxy".
Could this be an attempt to infect thousands of Slashdot users with a trojan? Seems odd to have these binary downloads from an unknown server, with no official attestation... even the user who submitted the story, Gottesser, was created recently and has no real info in the profile.
Re:Don't bother -- excellent point for paper audit (Score:3, Interesting)
Very good point. I hope you get modded up.
The State of California now requires a paper audit trail. I asked a friend of mine who works as a poll worker volunteer about the system used in Orange County, California. She gave me a detailed and intelligent response with specific information on how it works now. I posted these under another article, but it didn't the attention that I thought her remarks merited. I am also interested in any responses to them.
The "OC" uses voting machines with a paper audit trail system developed by Hart-Intercivic [harintercivic.com].
Here is what my friend had to say:
Personally, I have no confidence in any system without the paper audit trail requirements, and none in Diebold in particular.
Re:The procedure is what matters. (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, we are now caring a lot more about accuracy. The current manual processes can't handle the requirements for 100% accuracy or at least accuracy way beyond 0.9%. Could it be done with manual processes? Sure, banks used to do this completely manually all the time. It just takes time and more people. And duplication of efforts to ensure quality.
Not going to fly here, for a couple of reasons. One is there aren't enough workers. Another is that we can either count the votes fast or listen to the news reports because they will report results based on exit polls, surveys and guesswork.
Re:I won't ask... (Score:1, Interesting)
blackboxvoting.org = 72.3.135.10
(That ip address reverse resolves to blackboxvoting.org, which is expected.)
blackbox1.org = 72.32.2.234
(That ip address reverse resolves to floridawebmasters.com....)
Checking the floridawebmasters.com site, there's not any useful information. It's either in development, or a scam site placeholder. Maybe the reverse resolution is broken because someone forgot to update the records, or maybe the server was hacked and is just being used to host the files. Or maybe the files are being hosted on an account from digitaleel.com, which seems to have the same owner as floridawebmasters.com.
Re:Dont Help BBV (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No source code, sorry (Score:3, Interesting)
It's been about five years since I touched one, but they work well enough. They do a fine job of identifying basic blocks, variables, and functions, and produce code that can be fed back into a compiler. The big problem is that it's still largely unreadable because it doesn't have any of the conceptual meaning conveyed by the original code -- i.e. descriptive function/variable names.
Re:Crazy idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, and in theory, it could also tell you if it couldn't read the ballot because it was badly formed. Okay, machines can already do that, though in some notable cases in Florida this capability was disabled (but people just assumed it was because those voters were idiots).
I do think an electronic ballot machine has some advantages. I like the part of e-voting where I can easily browse candidates, click buttons that show the full text of any propositions or measures being voted on, easily change a vote if I decide to change my vote, and so on. I like the idea of eliminating penciling errors by having the computer print it. I like the accessibility options e-voting can give.
In my ideal e-voting world, you'd have one machine that prints ballots on card stock in a human-and-machine readable format (with the same markings, not human-readable-text and a barcode). You'd take the ballot it prints out and put it in a different machine that could count the vote. In fact, because the format of the ballot would be a matter of public record, anyone could make a ballot counting machine and after passing some basic certification (that it doesn't mangle ballots for example) could bring it to the election to verify that their machine got the same count as everyone else's machine.
Of course something simple like you describe works. As long as there is the paper record which is considered authoritative, and the machine count only an initial estimate, then that's a voting system I support.
Re:I won't ask... (Score:2, Interesting)