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Electronic Voting Machines (United States)

 
 
Perfect Tommy
19:23 / 20.08.04
I couldn't find any discussion about the electronic voting machines that are going to be used in the 2004 US presidential election.

What's the skinny? Most of my information comes from random discussions at parties: statements from Diebold like "We'll do all we can to help the Republican party," a complete lack of paper verifiability, and computer scientists being horrified when they finally were allowed to look at the code.

Absentee ballots are looking like a really good idea.
 
 
Bed Head
20:16 / 20.08.04
Well, you could look here for the skinny. If you want. Seemed pretty comprehensive to me, it’s an article that’s probably being used as the basis for thousands of party-conversations across America tonight.

I’m absolutely certain that if this happens and you really do get all-computerised voting, then we’ll be getting all-computerised voting in quick succession.
 
 
flufeemunk effluvia
01:48 / 24.08.04
Man, they should at least use something more fucking secure than windows. I don't trust windows enough for it to run America. LINUIX FOR AMERICA!
 
 
grant
15:00 / 24.08.04
From the St. Pete Times, 29 July:

While Gov. Jeb Bush reassures Floridians that touch screen voting machines are reliable, the Republican Party is sending the opposite message to some voters.

The GOP urged some Miami voters to use absentee ballots because touch screens lack a paper trail and cannot "verify your vote."

That's the same argument Democrats have made but which Bush, his elections director and Republican legislators have repeatedly rejected.

"The liberal Democrats have already begun their attacks and the new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount," says a glossy mailer, paid for by the Republican Party of Florida and prominently featuring two pictures of President Bush. "Make sure your vote counts. Order your absentee ballot today."


Hmmm.

But even as Democrats criticized the message, they realized that Republicans were making the point they have been making for months.



Hmmmm.

So how exactly do these machines work?
 
 
Perfect Tommy
02:46 / 01.09.04
I may soon induct myself into the Legion of Conspiracy Theorists, upon reading this note by Bev Harris of Black Box Voting:

Manipulation technique found in the Diebold central tabulator -- 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time.

By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.

This program is not "stupidity" or sloppiness. It was designed and tested over a series of a dozen version adjustments.
 
 
Perfect Tommy
02:49 / 01.09.04
Oh, I'm sorry... upon further reading, I realize I misunderstood, and it's much worse: the central tabulator reads touchscreen votes, paper ballots, absentee ballots, whatever. "If you were going to tamper with an election, would you rather tamper with 4,500 individual voting machines, or with just one machine, the central tabulator which receives votes from all the machines?"
 
 
sleazenation
06:52 / 01.09.04
And equally - would you trust the result of an electronic voting machine provided by a company whose owner overtly supports a single party.
 
 
flufeemunk effluvia
12:05 / 01.09.04
Now we'll get Jeb Bush in 2008 too!

Hooray for Gods Own Party!
 
 
Professor Silly
03:51 / 07.09.04
I live in the only county near Denver Colorado (that'd be Jefferson County) that uses these machines, and I will use an absentee ballot this year. I've also been encouraging anyone else who lives in my county (and plans to vote as I will) to do the same.

I remember hearing an interview with a college professor (who teaches programing) say on PBS that he could hack the central system that processes the votes, change the results, and cover his tracks all in less than ten minutes. That's enough for me not to trust 'em. I even mentioned this distrust to one of the election workers during the primary, and she nodded in agreement (such a delightful old lady).

All the other counties around here use either old-skool voting booths, fill-in-the-oval cards, or even (in the case of Boulder) actual paper ballots.
 
 
Perfect Tommy
06:34 / 09.09.04
The thing that's worrying me the most is the insecurity of the central tabulator. Because absentee ballots get around point-of-voting touch screens, but there's fuck-all to be done about that simple tabulator hack. Other than calling the UN and asking them to monitor our elections, I suppose.
 
 
grant
15:00 / 08.11.05
Just got forwarded this list of 20 problems with voting. It's largely about voting machines, exhaustively linked, and seems to be aimed at getting people thinking about 2006.

Because it doesn't seem like anything has changed.
 
 
Harold Washington died for you
17:17 / 08.11.05
I'm in Ohio and I'm sad to say the voting machine thing is still a non-issue. 44 of Ohio's 88 counties got brand-new electronic machines a month or so ago, from Diebold, and no one in the mainstream media could give a shit. That being said, there's a statewide issue on the ballot today that would let everyone who wanted to (as opposed to those who had a good excuse for missing Election Day) get an absentee ballot in the mail weeks before Election Day. It could help with the long lines that were a big problem in the more Democratic precincts last year...it could also help more dead people have their voice heard, I guess.
 
 
quixote
01:00 / 09.11.05
I seem to remember seeing an expert say that a paper trail could compensate for flaky machines, and that there are ways to make the machines significantly hack-proof. They just haven't bothered, so far. And, interestingly enough, it seems to always be Repugs saying there's no need for a paper trail. Also interestingly, insofar as mistaken counting by the machines could be identified (eg 5000 votes tallied from a precinct with 480 people, total), some phenomenal proportion of the errors (around 99%?) went Bush's way. The chances of that happening just randomly are a squillion to one.

A short article by Robert Koehler summarizing some of the evidence that 2004 was stolen too: The silent scream of numbers.

Detailed discussion of the stats by Mitteldorf, and other statisticians and mathematicians.

It is truly mind-boggling that there is so little mainstream concern about the integrity of the voting process. People seem to take one look and avert their eyes. Can't be, they say. Can't be. So, since the first step to fixing a bad thing is recognizing it, looks like we'll have this bad thing in 2006, 2008, 2010?, ????
 
 
Sjaak at the Shoe Shop
06:57 / 09.11.05
In the Netherlands (and I believe in other European countries as well) we have been using electronic voting machines for years (but not touch-screen), at least for the last three general elections as well as all regional elections in between and the system seems to work fine. No mention has ever been made of potential for fraud or hacking in any of the media.

In addition, exit polls are so close to the mark that the act as an independent quality control.

I could imagine that in a case like the Florida recount there could be an issue. However, would this be any less reliable than the way it was run at the last election? Staring at holes punched in a paper sheet, debating whether there is a hole or not? This system seems like a major improvement.

I would think the possibility for fraud will be extremely small as everybody will be monitoring the system very closely. It will be interesting to see how the quality control and verification is going to be organized though.
 
 
Dead Megatron
17:57 / 10.11.05
I'm form Brazil. I we have been using eletronic voting machines for quite some time now, and they are extremely reliable, and so easy to use that even old people from California can get ir right. Eletronic voting actually makes it easier to keep watch of the counting, not harder. That is, assuming the government officers, the Parties representatives and the programmers are not all together in some sort od conspiracy (even if they are all dishonest, they can't all be dishonest in the same direction, can they?)
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
18:48 / 10.11.05
I think in the case of the States, anyway, it's the companies that make the machines and yes, the programmers, who aren't to be trusted.
 
 
w1rebaby
19:59 / 10.11.05
The Brazilian thing is interesting, though. The code for the Brazilian machines is open source, and they have paper trails, so citizens can check that there are no holes in the software and forging things would indeed be very difficult. IIRC, Diebold was involved in producing those machines.

In the USA, Diebold claims that they can't possibly make the code open and that it's entirely uneconomic to have paper trails. Odd, really.
 
 
quixote
14:37 / 13.11.05
Odd, really.

VERY odd.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
17:16 / 14.11.05
Spookily enough, I found this on the interweb a few hours ago - will put the link up when I get a chance.

Did you know…. 1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush’s vice-presidential candidates.

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

9. Diebold’s new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

11. Diebold is based in Ohio, the state that handed the Presidency to Bush.

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.

13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.

14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a “high degree of sophistication” to evade detection over a period of 2 years.

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold’s claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! ( 17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

18. All—not some—but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President’s brother.

20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida—again always favoring Bush—have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
 
 
Hattie's Kitchen
17:19 / 14.11.05
US voting
 
 
Kirk Ultra
01:58 / 16.11.05
Blackboxvoting.org is probably the best site around for keeping up on the state of voting machines in the US. The site very thoroughly covered the 2004 elections and was very thoroughly by the mainstream media (and even most alternative media) at the time.

And here's a story I just found that even Blackboxvoting hasn't picked up yet. Powerful Government Accountability Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings - by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
With comment by Michael C. Ruppert


I found it at fromthewilderness.com
 
 
grant
19:54 / 01.08.06
Legion of Conspiracy Theorists, draw near!

The Open Voting Foundation is making dramatic new claims about the fudgability of Diebold voting machines!

Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version.

“Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant,” according to Dechert. “If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS -- and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver.” This model does not produce a voter verified paper trail so there is no way to check if the voter’s choices are accurately reflected in the tabulation.

Open Voting Foundation is releasing 22 high-resolution close up pictures of the system. This picture, in particular, shows a “BOOT AREA CONFIGURATION” chart painted on the system board.

The most serious issue is the ability to choose between "EPROM" and "FLASH" boot configurations. Both of these memory sources are present. All of the switches in question (JP2, JP3, JP8, SW2 and SW4) are physically present on the board. It is clear that this system can ship with live boot profiles in two locations, and switching back and forth could change literally everything regarding how the machine works and counts votes. This could be done before or after the so-called "Logic And Accuracy Tests".


I don't know anything about the organization, so I'm inclined to be skeptical about this -- it's definitely written in a way intended to create panic. But at this point, I'd be ready to believe just about anything.

It also shows up on the front page of BlackBoxVoting.org, so it seems legit.
 
 
Kirk Ultra
23:40 / 01.08.06
The voting machines are something people should have been panicking about back in 2004. Elections are still being stolen all over the country, including the democratic congressional primaries in Georgia, where votes placed for Cynthia McKinney (my hero) on Diebold voting machines are registering as votes for her opponent.

http://www.disinfo.com/site/displayarticle16754.html

It is highly doubtful that any political progress will be made any time in the near future as long as we have electronic voting machines with no paper trail that were manufactured by Neocon supporters who used to work for the CIA.
 
 
Dragon
02:13 / 02.08.06
Diebold defends itself against charges, by Allegheny county.
 
 
Dragon
02:36 / 02.08.06
One concern I have about voting, no matter what kind of machine is used, are polls where people are allowed to vote without ID.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:52 / 02.08.06
Gosh. If I worked in Diebold's PR department, which thankfully I don't, I'd be very cross with Buck Jones about now.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
17:42 / 03.08.06
It's not really the most convincing, or indeed grown-up rebuttal ever, is it?
 
 
grant
14:10 / 19.09.06
You can open them with hotel minibar keys.

Let's leave aside questions of computer code, potential viruses and things that most people find a little incomprehensible.

You can open the box with a key you can buy at any office supply store.


My thinking: I could potentially bluff my way into any precinct (I think an official-looking jumpsuit and some fake DIEBOLD ID tags would help), open a machine and leave. It'd take around 30 seconds. If I was registered in that precinct, it'd be way easier. The next person finds the open door, and bingo -- votes on that machine would be (should be) invalidated.

Am I wrong?

And does anybody know about groups working on the electronic equivalent of this? Are there completely unethical gangs of wild hacker pirates working on voting machine viruses as I type this?
 
 
grant
15:03 / 02.11.06
Problems are myriad, and in many states.

Of special interest in that run-down is the one they save for last (in news, this is known as BURYING THE LEAD), which is described in detail as the "Yellow Button Hack" on BlackBoxVoting.Org.

Because the "hack" involves pressing a yellow button on the back of the machine. And almost nothing else. No keys. No opening panels. No lines of code.

Here is how the "Yellow Button Hack" is done:

1. Go to the back of the voting machine. Press and hold the yellow activate button (about 3 seconds). Release when the screen says "waiting for next voter".

2. Press and hold the yellow button again until the screen says "change to manual activation?"

3. Touch the "Yes" button on the screen.

4. At that point there will be a message on the screen that says "Manual activate voting enabled" (this is just displayed briefly)

5. Next message will read "Waiting for the next voter" When you see that you touch the message that says "start voting" or "resume voting" located in the lower right of the screen The AVC Edge is now set up for poll worker activation mode.

Here is the sequence:

If it's regular voting (as opposed to provisional)

a. Once you've touched the start or resume the "waiting for next voter" appears

b. Activate the ballot by pressing and releasing the yellow activate button

c. Activate the correct party for the voter AND press the yellow activate button using the keypad on the display screen

d. Select the voter's language if appropriate

e. Vote. (Once the voter has completed voting and cast their ballot. Prepare the Edge for the next voter. If the next voter is a regular voter repeat step B and D above.

You can now vote as many times as you want to.





 
 
unheimlich manoeuvre
15:54 / 02.11.06
There's another thread here with some other links including to newspaper articles at the time.
 
 
sleazenation
19:39 / 02.11.06
OK,
A question - Is there anything to prevent concerned voters from registering for a postal ballot as a means of circumventing electronic voting?
 
 
grant
20:16 / 02.11.06
Well, just the awkwardness of the system. I'm not even sure how to get an absentee ballot from my supervisor of elections -- I think I'd have to call the office and request one before a certain deadline, but they might want a request in writing.

It varies.
 
 
sleazenation
21:03 / 02.11.06
It could be argued that an organized pro-postal ballot campaign might be both a means of ensuring your vote isn't subject the the problems of electronic voting and a vote of no-confidence in the technology/set up...
 
 
Mirror
21:57 / 02.11.06
At least in Colorado, obtaining an absentee ballot is simplicity in itself, though you do have to mind the deadlines. Here, all you do is download an absentee ballot application from the county clerk's office and send it in at any time up to 7 days before the election, and your ballot arrives in the mail within 2-3 days. Which, I might add, I'm glad of, because my county uses direct-recording electronic machines (no paper trail.)

Out here, a lot of the campaign junk mail we get actually comes with absentee ballot application forms.
 
  
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