Diebold voting systems critically flawed

[Kaylee]

Cylinder you are being purposely difficult. You just got spoon fed Snohomish County in Washington State.

 

[Cylinder]

Cylinder you are being purposely difficult. You just got spoon fed Snohomish County in Washington State.

OK. Let's examine Washington. Title 29A of the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) codifies their election law. Chapter 12 covers voting systems. Here are the specific relevant statutes:

RCW 29A.12.020:

The secretary of state shall inspect, evaluate, and publicly test all voting systems or components of voting systems that are submitted for review under RCW 29A.12.030...

RCW 29A.12.040:

The secretary of state may rely on the results of independent design, engineering, and performance evaluations in the examination under RCW 29A.12.020 if the source and scope of these independent evaluations are specified by rule.

I still don't see how asking for testable claims makes one difficult if the claim itself has any merit. Remember that we have decided earlier in the thread that "faith-based" is not a good measure of reliability in these matters.

Do you agree that Washington's election code does not provide for "faith-based" accountability and instead requires inspection, evaluation and public testing for all voting systems and components?

Of course, you did not make the faith-based claim...

 

[Kaylee]

POST #31

No - you are making a faith-based argument. Name a single state that uses any form electronic voting that is not publically accountable. Any one will do.

POST #42

OK. Let's examine Washington. Title 29A of the Revised Code of Washington (RCW) codifies their election law. Chapter 12 covers voting systems. Here are the specific relevant statutes:

RCW 29A.12.020:

RCW 29A.12.040:

I still don't see how asking for testable claims makes one difficult if the claim itself has any merit. Remember that we have decided earlier in the thread that "faith-based" is not a good measure of reliability in these matters.

Do you agree that Washington's election code does not provide for "faith-based" accountability and instead requires inspection, evaluation and public testing for all voting systems and components?

Of course, you did not make the faith-based claim...

{Sigh}

I think in your post #42 , you forgot what you asked about in your post #31.

The plaintiffs, Lehto and Wells, are sueing the defendants:
* county Snohomish in Washington State
* and the provider of the voting machines in that county, Sequoia,

because the defendants are violating Washington' State's election code. IOW, they are using a form of electronic voting that is not publicaly accountable. You asked for a state that was doing so in post #31 . Voting is organized by county -- so I gave you a county instead.

 

[Cylinder]

I think in your post #42 , you forgot what you asked about in your post #31.

No. I am asserting that according to Washington's election law, voting machines have public accountability. Do you agree that the statute meets that threshold?

If the threshold you assert is that anyone can test any machine at any time, then, in my opinion, your threshold is too high and promotes insecurity, unnecessary cost and election chaos.

The plaintiffs, Lehto and Wells, are sueing the defendants:
* county Snohomish in Washington State
* and the provider of the voting machines in that county, Sequoia,

because the defendants are violating Washington' State's election code. IOW, they are using a form of electronic voting that is not publicaly accountable. You asked for a state that was doing so in post #31 .

Right. You realize that those are claims made by a civil plaintiff. Once again, I cannot reasonably expect that person or persons to support their claims here with evidence that can be weighed, so I have to leave it up to the person citing that claim here to defend those claims with whatever evidence can be found.

Voting is organized by county -- so I gave you a county instead.

In this case it is not. The state validates election equipment, not the counties. Counties are free to choose from the list authorized by the state. It's the same in all of the 20 or so states I have researched and I suspect it is the same without exception - though I have not verified that fact to my satisfaction.

Election precincts and officials are often drawn by counties, though I did not read RCW Title 29A closely enough to know if that is the case in Washinton.

 

[CFLarsen]

Two reasons, I think.

1. Reduce voter error. States that have initiatives on the ballot have fairly complicated ballots that computer screens can make somewhat clearer. In addition, computer voting eliminates ambiguous voter actions like a partially removed chad or an unclear mark.

What complicated ballots are you talking about? Can you show an example?

2. Improve security. The possibility of having a paper trail coupled with vote totalling done automatically for audit purposes offer the possibility of a voter system which is more secure than a paper only system.

That can be achieved by comparing the list of voters handed a ballot to the total number of cast ballots.

We have a very simple system in Denmark: The moment an election is announced, a list of eligible voters are extracted from the centralized civil register and voter cards are printed and sent to people.

On election day, each voter goes to a specified polling station, usually the nearest schools (kids have election days off). People can vote from 8-20. When they get there, they show their voter card to the people, who find them on paper lists, printed for the occasion. They are ticked off (two persons supervise this), handed a ballot, and shown to the voting booth where they vote. They walk out and dump the ballot themselves in secured ballot boxes.

When the polling stations close at 20:00, the doors are closed, and a group of volunteers - usually from the political parties - start counting. The first count is reported (I think it is still by phone) to the Ministry of Interior who in turn report them to the news networks. Elections are big events on TV here.

This is a very fast process. We usually have almost all votes counted by 22:30-23:00, so a result can be made public.

In the following 2-3 days, the votes are fine-counted: They are checked to see if anything is wrong, and the results are double-checked. In case of doubt, the Ministry of Interior investigates.

It's a very quick and safe system. Sure, it involves a lot of manpower, but the great part is that there is a very small risk of fraud. I can only remember 2-3 cases in the past 10 years of voter fraud, and that was only a handful of votes.

The main problem, up to now, is that people have focused on issue one without giving any priority to issue 2. And, IMHO, issue 1 isn't really that important in the overall scheme of things compared to issue 2.

I don't think anyone will ever design a system - be it in whatever form - where voters won't cast the wrong vote.

 

[gnome]

What complicated ballots are you talking about? Can you show an example?

http://www.infoimagination.org/ps/election_2000/images_2000/ballot_official.gif

 

[CFLarsen]

http://www.infoimagination.org/ps/election_2000/images_2000/ballot_official.gif

Hehehe....

 

[corplinx]

Every DieBold problem is "critical" to those kooks at BBV. No big news there.

 

[rocketdodger]

Why on earth would they use clunky diebold machines when they can just use a bunch of PCs?

 

[Kaylee]

Hmmm, Cylinder, have you moved the goalposts? The OP is about the flaws in the Diebold Voting Systems. I admit that I moved the goalposts to expand it to all vendors electronic voting systems. It sounds like you now want to address whether citizens should have the legal right and standing to directly be involved in determining if the election system records and tabulates votes accurately. And to do so specifically in the case of Lehto and Wells vs. Sequoia Voting Systems and Snohomish County.

Regrettably, I don't have time to read all the legal documents or legal code in regard to this case. I am sorry about that because I find it very interesting, but unfortunately real life interfers. Although I don't have the time to explore the various legal codes and court cases on this topic, I will say that I do support citizens having the legal standing to directly protect their interests in having a valid electoral system in court. If you want to say that because I don't have the time to read the thousand of pages on this topic that I'm coping out -- well I guess I will have to give you that point.

However, for those interested in the topic raised by the original OP
www.votersunite.org has produced a booklet called: Mythbreakers: Facts About Electronic Elections.

I just started reading it. The author writes better than I do, and you may prefer her summary about the risks that the current versions of electronic voting poses to democracy.

http://www.votersunite.org/MB2.pdf

Overview

Election transparency is the fundamental basis of election integrity.
In transparent elections, all the processes of handling and counting ballots are completely open to public view. Nothing is hidden, nothing is secret – except, of course, each individual's voting choices.

Election fraud and miscounts have occurred throughout history, and they will continue to occur. Transparency is the only way to minimize them, but with electronic voting, transparency is eclipsed. Electronic processes that record and count the votes are not open to public scrutiny. Courts have ruled that election software is a trade secret, so even a losing candidate with a computer consultant cannot view it. With electronic voting, the most important and vulnerable election processes – storing and tallying the votes – are performed in secret, without public oversight. These processes were not developed by government officials charged with ensuring election integrity, but by anonymous software engineers, hired by vendors and not publicly accountable for the results of their work.

One would expect overwhelming benefits to accompany this sacrifice of transparency and the resulting loss of public control over election processes. That's the myth. Ironically, overwhelming disadvantages accompany the sacrifice. The logical question is "Why make the sacrifice?" It's a question more and more people are asking.

The facts presented in this document dispel many of the myths surrounding electronic voting. It is crucial to lay these myths to rest quickly, for as long as they are held by decision-makers, our democracy is at risk.

Pgs 4 - 12 (Section 2) in the booklet document various electronic voting problems that have occurred throughout the country.

 

[Cylinder]

Hmmm, Cylinder, have you moved the goalposts? The OP is about the flaws in the Diebold Voting Systems.

No. I was responding to a specific claim that the various states rely on faith-based voting without public accountability. You did not make those claims but chose to defend them. To do that, one must first agree on a particular state to examine - the responsibility of the person making that claim.

Do you agree that researching and presenting the relevant facts is a more meaningful methodology than presenting slogans and accusing those who challenge them of trolling?

 

[davefoc]

CFL,
I agree that a simple paper ballot approach can be part of an election system with good security.

It is exactly for that reason that I think any introduction of electronic voting machines should be very carefully thought out because the system they are replacing may be very good.

I believe the systems in the US with the lowest voter error rates are paper ballots which can be machine readable for counting.

In my area we have used what appears to be a very good system to me. The ballots are specially designed punch cards (not to be confused with the computer punch card systems used in Florida). The holes are punced with a manual device that seems to make it very difficult to produce an ambiguous result (meaning that either a hole is punched or it isn't). Of course the system doesn't eliminate the possibility of people punching multiple holes and it doesn't eliminate the possibility that somebody can misposition the card, but it does make that difficult. Interestingly, no ID or voter card is required to vote in the California voting system. The system involves a poll worker crossing the voter's name off a list to prevent multiple votes by a single individual. Some people have advocated that ID be required but for reasons I don't quite understand some see this as an unnecessary burden.

Zep wrote:

The well-publicised issues to do with dimpled or hanging chads, etc, could be dealt with by simply improving the mechanical punching method (I used IBM 026 card punches in my youth, and they NEVER hanged or dimpled chads! So it can be done...).

I also used IBM punch cards in my youth and I have a different view. The card readers would occasionally skip an entire card and the punched cards themselves would occasionally be misread. While I agree the system was moderately reliable, compared to modern computing technology the bit error rates associated with IBM punch cards was huge.

I think using the cards for a modern voting system was an horrendous kludge and I suspect the same kind of technically unsophisticated or corrupted people that opted for that system are now involved in opting for the new electronic voting machines.

 

[Rob Lister]

There is no fraud-proof system. Therefore, the opportunity to commit fraud must be evenly distributed among all vested parties. It's only fair.

 

[zakur]

Just out of Princeton - Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine

Abstract This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab. Mitigating these threats will require changes to the voting machine's hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Sorry if I challenged your faith. I was just looking for a specific claim that could be tested.

You do agree that election rules are codified by the various states, right?

The Mark sense ballot sheets we used in Texas work like the old standardized tests did. I don't see any reason to not keep using them. Computer ballots are, IMO, far to vulnerable, and not auditable, in comparison. You can keep the paper results as a back up, as a verification, if something in the electronic tallying is goofed up.

The added expense is ensuring the pre election calibration is complete and satisfactory.

For Claus: the pure paper ballot method, which has its advantages and comfortable feel, holds considerable risks due to a technique called ballot box stuffing. The various tales of how President Johnson got into the Senate are filled with accounts of ballot box stuffing. Loads of internet references if you are interested, modest googling presents a treasure trove. There are even rumors that the graveyards still empty each year in Jimi Wells counts, and thousands vote for LBJ, but that's a bit woo.

DR

 

[BobK]

What irks me is the insecurity of the machines doesn't get much play in the news. Yet Anna Nicole Smith is mentioned all over the place.

 

[Darth Rotor]

What irks me is the insecurity of the machines doesn't get much play in the news. Yet Anna Nicole Smith is mentioned all over the place.

She's an insecure emoting machine, which is close enough for the McNews networks.

DR

 

[zakur]

“Hotel Minibar” Keys Open Diebold Voting Machines

 

[Dave1001]

Why exactly do we need to switch to Diebold or other forms of electronic voting machines? Is this an unanswerable question?

 

[davefoc]

Why exactly do we need to switch to Diebold or other forms of electronic voting machines? Is this an unanswerable question?

I don't think the question is unanswerable. I think it is obvious we don't need to switch to electronic voting machines.

My own view:

I can think of at least four possible reasons why electronic voting is an improvement over other methods:
1. Greater security
2. Better at determining intent of voter
3. Unambiguous results
4. Reduced dost of vote tallying

For me, the most significant advantage is item 1, greater security. The problem is that the people who bought the systems and the people that designed the systems failed to appropriately focus on security, to the point that electronic voting systems as originally sold were less secure than other methods and that seems like a huge problem that overwhelms any potential advantages from the other items on my list.