California Opts for Verifiable Voting
California Opts for Verifiable Voting
AP:
California requires electronic voting machines to make receipts.
(Secretary of State Kevin) Shelley also
introduced stricter requirements for testing and auditing of the
software used to record and tabulate votes in the nation's most populous
state. The move may prompt changes in the type of voting equipment used
throughout the country as precincts rush to modernize terminals.
This is an absolutely huge victory for the cause
of safe voting. Shelley has listened to the real experts -- the computer
scientists who understand technology and its flaws -- and has done
precisely the right thing.
California's requirement will reverberate nationwide.
The electronic voting machine makers will have to revise their technology
in ways that other jurisdictions can take advantage of -- and safe-voting
activists will have every right to demand that they do.
You'll be hearing sob stories in coming days and weeks
from local voting officials who insist that Shelley is adding cost and
other burdens at a time when we can't afford even basics in government.
Ask them what is more basic in a democracy than a verified vote.
It's impossible to overstate the importance of Kelley's
decision. Here's a salute to his wisdom, and his leadership.
top
Evidence
Grows that 2002 Georgia Election Was Rigged
Wired reports, "A former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the
company installed patches on its machines before the state's 2002
gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing
authorities or cleared with GA election officials. If the charges are
true, Diebold could be in violation of federal and state
election-certification rules. The charges also raise questions about the
integrity of the GA election results... [Bev Harris] said the practice of
patching systems after they've been certified opens the possibility for
anyone to install malicious code on a machine that could alter election
results and then delete itself to avoid detection. According to Harris,
this scenario is particularly worrisome in light of what happened in the
GA gubernatorial race, which ended in a major upset that defied all polls
and put a Republican in the governor's seat for the first time in more
than 130 years" - as well as the surprise "loss" of Sen. Max Cleland.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60563,00.html
E-Mails by Diebold Execs Admit Security Holes in Voting Machines, Write
of Need to Prevent Independent Testing
UK Independent: "One of these, Diebold's vice-president of research and
development, Talbot Iredale, wrote an e-mail in April 2002 - later
obtained by the campaigners - making it clear that he wanted to shield the
operating system from Wylie Labs, an independent testing agency involved
in the early certification process. The reason that emerges from the
e-mail is that he wanted to make the software compatible with WinCE 3.0,
an operating system used for handhelds and PDAs; in other words, a system
that could be manipulated from a remote location. In an earlier
intercepted e-mail, this one from Ken Clark in Diebold's research and
development department, the company explained upfront to another
independent testing lab that the supposedly secure software system could
be accessed without a password, and its contents easily changed using the
Microsoft Access programme." Yet SAIC says the system is "secure"! (See
http://www.govtech.net/news/news.phtml?docid=2003.09.30-70200)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=452972
....bernieW, 10/15/03
top
Sponsored by Black Box Voting: Instant reporting at
http://www.BBVreport.org – California voters can submit voting
experiences immediately at this site. For unusual or egregious problems,
the BBV team contacts the media to direct them to the scene of the action.
For a list of documented examples where the voting machines miscounted in
real elections (often flipping the decision to the wrong candidate, even
when the election was not particularly close) download the Chapter 2
report on the BBVreport.org page. For an inside look at the voting
machines manufactured by Diebold, download the Chapter 7 report.
The BlackBoxVoting.com and .org sites have been harassed recently; should
the web address above fail, go to the backup site:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org for more information.
Contact: David Allen, 336-454-7766 with questions or to set up interviews
with Black Box Voting author Bev Harris.
Computer Voting Expert Ousted From Elections Conference
Lynn Landes
freelance journalist
www.EcoTalk.org
Denver CO Aug 1 - Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, a leading expert in voting machine
security, had her conference credentials revoked by the president of the
International Association of Clerks, Records, Election Officials, and
Treasurers (IACREOT), Marianne Rickenbach. The annual IACREOT Conference
and Trade Show, which showcases election systems to elections officials,
is being held at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Denver all this week.
Mercuri believes that her credentials were revoked because of her position
in favor of voter-verified paper ballots for computerized election
systems. "I guess in a very troubling way it makes sense that an
organization like IACREOT, that supports paperless computerized voting
systems, which are secret by their very design, would not want computer
experts who disagree with that position at their meetings."
Dr. Mercuri said that her credentials were approved for the first three
days of the conference. She attended meetings of other groups and visited
the exhibitors hall. But it was only on Thursday as she sat down to attend
her first meeting at the IACREOT that President Marianne Rickenbach took
Mercuri out of the room and told her that her credentials were being
revoked. Rickenbach said that Mercuri had not filled out the forms
correctly. Mercuri protested, but was refused reinstatement.
David Chaum, the inventor of eCash and a member of Mercuri's
'voter-verified paper ballot' group, had his credentials revoked on the
first day of the conference. On the second day his credentials were
partially restored. Chaum was allowed to visit the exhibitors hall, but
not attend the IACREOT meetings.
Rickenbach was unavailable for comment as of this report.
...from
http://scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0308/S00014.htm posted 8/7/03
WF note: Ms Mercuri was one of the computer
consultants contacted by Janet Reno after the 2002
primary. She also participated in the debate around purchasing
touchscreen
voting machines in Hillsborough or Pasco? County.
top
The following is a plain text copy of a resolution passed without opposition last night at the March 5, 2003, meeting of the 69th Assembly District in California. The resolution will be presented to the state for a vote at the state party convention, March 14-16, 2003.
Resolution To Protect Voting Rights and Ensure Accuracy of Results
Drafted by Alexandar and Natasha Hull-Richter; proposed by Ruth and Mark Hull-Richter.
Whereas the only real way of checking the accuracy of voting machines is through a paper trail, and
Whereas without an express right of public inspection and testing of the source code for voting machine software, the public will have no assurance as to the accuracy of the results, and
Whereas private ownership of source code used in public elections poses a threat to the integrity of the democratic process, and
Whereas allowance of last minute voting machine modifications could create doubts as to the reliability of results from machines which receive the modifications,
Be it resolved that we the members of the 69th Assembly District, in order to protect voting rights in California, recommend legislation requiring that all voting machines have a paper audit trail, that all voting software is the property of the people of California and open to public inspections and testing, and that no modifications to voting computers be allowed without public inspection of all the specifications of the modification, verification of the individuals seeking to apply the modification, and no modifications are to be allowed close to the election without judicial approval.
Be it also resolved that we the members of the 69th recommend criminal penalties and high civil fines for each violation of the recommended legislation.
Passed without opposition on March 5, 2003.
... AnnetteO, 3/8/03
top
425-228-7131; Dan Spillane direct 206-860-2858
Full text of lawsuit: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/votehere-lawsuit-1.html
2/25/2003 -- Dan Spillane, a voting machine test engineer, has filed a
lawsuit against his former employer, DRE touch-screen voting machine
manufacturer VoteHere.
Spillane's lawsuit charges wrongful and retaliatory termination; he
contends he was removed so that he could not blow the whistle to
certification labs and pass critical information to the US General
Accounting Office.
He says he has evidence which shows voting systems are certified despite
known flaws, demonstrating a weakness in both the NASED and the ITA system
for certifying machines.
-- SANTA CLARA COUNTY decided Tuesday night to purchase machines
without a paper trail, despite the urgent warnings of over 100 of the
nation's top computer security experts. Officials pointed to the strength
of NASED and ITA certification when explaining their reasons for ignoring
the warnings.
-- Similarly, Collins County Texas decided this week not to follow safety
recommendations for a paper ballot audit trail, in part due to assurances
that the NASED and ITA certifications could be counted upon to catch
errors or vote-rigging.
Spillane, the first insider from a voting machine manufacturer to come
forward, reports that system flaws sometimes go undetected. His former
company, VoteHere, manufactures touch-screen machines of its own -- which
have been certified by NASED and national ITAs -- but also markets its
software for use inside machines made by other companies.
Spillane says in his lawsuit that he reported over 250 issues in the
VoteHere voting system, including critical errors that can prevent the
machines from correctly registering the votes, or working efficiently on
election day. He sought meetings with company officials to express
concerns about integrity flaws, which he says led to his firing. His
complaint indicates that VoteHere did not address the flaws, and that the
VoteHere system was certified by independent testing labs despite known
issues.
Georgia recently approved VoteHere's machines, and the military and others
are considering the technology.
Spillane also alleges company officials bragged about using political
connections to pass software, rather than meeting the rules.
VoteHere's board of directors includes former CIA director Robert Gates.
VoteHere's Chairman is Admiral Bill Owens, who was senior military
assistant to Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney, and
also includes Ralph Munro, a key Washington State politician.
Spillane's findings also suggest the recently-passed Help America Vote Act
makes problems worse, by releasing a large sum of up-front money for
equipment based on the same approval system which led to Florida 2000.
....talion, 2/26/03
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
According to Salon.com, Joseph Richardson, a spokesman for Diebold
Election Systems, now denies that a program patch was ever applied to the
Georgia voting machines: "We have analyzed that situation and have no
indication of that happening at all."
[ http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/20/voting_machines/index.html
]
Well okay. But did everyone in the Georgia Secretary of State's Office
imagine this last-minute voting program fix? Michael Barnes, of the
Georgia Secretary of State's Elections Office, says he actually helped
install the patch himself, and though it was a big job, they
"touched" every one of Georgia's 22,000 voting machines before
the November 2002 election.
Chris Riggall, the spokesperson for Secretary of State Cathy Cox, wrote a
memo in August, 2002 detailing plans to install the patch on every machine
in Georgia.
Was Dr. Brit Williams, the official independent examiner for the National
Association of State Election Directors, just fantasizing when he
remembers that teams of people drove around Georgia installing the program
fix while he was doing acceptance testing on the last batch of voting
machines?
Perhaps the 20 teams of technicians dispatched to install the patch simply
hallucinated their journey.
Diebold Election Systems, the company that has voting machines installed
in 31 states and five Canadian provinces and is busily selling more voting
machines, has still not explained their folder called "rob-georgia,"
which contained -- well -- voting machine program patches.
Georgia officials do admit that a program fix was administered to all
22,000 unauditable touch-screen voting machines shortly before the
November 2002 election.
========================
FROM REGULATIONS ISSUED BY CATHY COX, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE JAN 2001:
"Any modification to the hardware, firmware, or software of an
existing system which has completed Qualification, Certification, or
Acceptance testing in accordance with these Rules will invalidate the
State certification unless it can be shown that the change does not affect
the overall flow of program control or the manner in which the ballots are
interpreted"
==========================
Unfortunately, no one examined the computer code on the Georgia voting
machine patch to ascertain what it actually did. And no voter-verified
audit trail is available to check the accuracy of the voting machines.
WHO'S LYING ABOUT THE FTP SITE?
In another security stuff-up, Diebold's technicians admit that they were
parking files on an unprotected FTP site that anyone could access. The
files contained on the FTP site amounted to a virtual tutorial for anyone
interested in vote-rigging: easy-to-edit source code, hardware and
software specs, testing protocols, sample ballots and election data.
According to the Baltimore City Paper, Diebold now claims that the
"old Global Elections Systems [FTP] site has been taken down because
it contained old, out-of-date material."
[ http://www.citypaper.com/current/mobs2.html
]
Okay. But Diebold purchased Global Elections System in January, 2002 (and,
apparently, never really folded this company in. Diebold wrapped its
trusted name around the voting machine company, but it is now unclear how
much Diebold's management knew about the inner workings of its new
wholly-owned voting machine division, which still operates out of
McKinney, Texas.
The open FTP site was not closed down until around January 29, 2003, and
among the most recent files on the open FTP site: A file dated
January 16, 2003 called "CentralCountRN2.0.11.doc" located in a
zipped folder called "CC2.0.11.zip." This file contained the
release notes for version 2.0.11 of Diebold's AccuVote Optical Scan
system.
Other recent files:
CC2ROMA.HEX 100 kb 1/16/03
CC2ROMB.HEX 57 kb 1/16/03
In the unpassworded cvs.tar file posted on the FTP site (which appears to
include the source code tree) at least 800 of the 2,140 files are dated
well into 2002, after Diebold bought Global Elections Systems, and just
months before the 2002 general election
An engineer from a voting machine company that competes with Diebold
called me to tell me his department was enjoying the BlackBoxVoting.com
site. Yes, it's true, we've been gathering kind of a fan club among some
of the more idealistic the voting company techies. "It's been general
industry knowledge that that open FTP site existed," he confided.
Okay. So the source code for these machines was so proprietary that even
citizens groups weren't allowed to examine it. But it was available for
perusal by Diebold's competitors? This is a very unusual way to protect
materials you are calling "proprietary."
According to Diebold's official statement quoted in both Salon.com and
Baltimore City Paper:
"Diebold has been synonymous with security, and we take security very
seriously in all of our products and services."
Well okay. But although some of the thousands of files parked on its open
FTP site had passwords, other (wide-open) files list the passwords
themselves:
Filename: passwd
Contents:
ken:Cx4JrK4Q4uebk
tri:UEGNh.UaiLRQk
dmitry:dyNCBKljMDVDU
According to the Baltimore City Paper, Maryland elections chief Linda
Lamone says her staff discovered Diebold's open file server before last
November's election. "They found [the open server] and refused to use
it," she says. "They were very upset about it."
Well okay. But if they refused to use it, why did the open FTP site
contained several hundred Maryland election files, date-stamped within
weeks of the election?
The Baltimore City Paper goes on to say, "Georgia, however, did use
the open server, downloading software patches to tweak the elections
program and ensure it worked properly on Election Day."
Well okay. But Michael Barnes, of the Georgia Secretary of State Elections
Division, said this: "That FTP site did not affect us in any way
shape or form because we did not do any file transferring from it. None of
the servers ever connected so no one could have transferred files from it.
No files were transferred relating to state elections."
The files on Diebold's unprotected FTP site contained a vast set of zipped
files, most containing subdirectories, perhaps a total of 4,500 files, so
numerous that no one has yet even catalogued all of them. I'm now told
that all the files have been gotten. I hear that a virgin complete set of
the downloaded files now resides in a safe deposit box. And I have been
told that a limited number of investigative reporters from large,
mainstream news sources are gaining access to copies of the repository. As
things continue to unfold, we'll all get to see: Who's lying?
NEXT: THE MOVEMENT TO PUT THEM UNDER OATH:
Contact insider@blackboxvoting.com
if you are an attorney who is interested in becoming involved.
Contact david@blackboxvoting.com
if you are a citizen in any of the 30 states who may wish to become a
plaintiff in an inexpensive lawsuit to: (a) Decertify or do a recall on
your 2002 election; (b) obtain testimony over the chain of custody of all
program code, "patches," memory cards, and files from the open
FTP site in your area; (c) file a product liability suit on behalf of
county governments who purchased the machines; (d) enact new legislation
mandating a paper trail, with open access to compare the paper trail to
machine counts by citizens, media groups and election workers in every
election.
If you would like to contribute to tech analysis, let us know: tech@blackboxvoting.com.
ALSO, we need a volunteer to type several hundred individual counties'
contact information, which contains what kinds of voting machines they
have, off of a faxed document into a text or Word file so that we can post
it on the web.
(Unprotected FTP site had sensitive programming files for both
Touch-Screen and Optical Scan tabulation machines)
LOCATIONS WITH DIEBOLD MACHINES
TS = Touch-Screens with no paper trail
Alaska
Arizona
California - TS
Colorado - TS
District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia - TS
Iowa
Illinois
Indiana - TS
Kansas - TS
Kentucky - TS
Massachussetts
Maryland - TS
Maine
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
North Carolina - TS
New Hampshire
New Mexico
Nevada
Ohio
South Carolina
Tennessee - TS
Texas
Virginia - TS
Vermont
Washington
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Canada:
Alberta
British Columbia
Ontario - TS
Quebec
Saskatchewan
-- Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st
Century. This article is copyright by Bev Harris, but permission is
granted for reprint in print, e-mail, or web media so long as this
credit is attached. Harris can be contacted through
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Top
Hacking democracy? Computerized vote-counting machines are sweeping the country. But they can be hacked -- and right now there's no way to be sure they haven't been.
By Farhad Manjoo
Feb. 20, 2003 | During the past five months, Bev Harris has e-mailed to news organizations a series of reports that detail alarming problems in the high-tech voting machinery currently sweeping its way through American democracy. But almost no one is paying attention.
Harris is a literary publicist and writer whose investigations into the secret world of voting equipment firms have led some to call her the Erin Brockovich of elections. Harris has discovered, for example, that Diebold, the company that supplied touch-screen voting machines to Georgia during the 2002 election, made its system's sensitive software files available on a public Internet site. She has reported on the certification process for machines coming onto the market -- revealing that the software code running the equipment is seldom thoroughly reviewed and can often be changed with mysteriously installed "patches" just prior to an election. And in perhaps her most eyebrow-raising coup, she found that Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, used to run the company that built most of the machines that count votes in his state -- and that he still owns a stake in the firm.
Harris hasn't been alone in making such discoveries. A small group of writers, technologists and activists is working hard to convince elections officials all over the country that their rush to upgrade aging punch-card machines with seemingly more reliable touch-screen systems is dangerous. But so far neither the general public nor elections officials appear too worried.
It's not hard to see why: If you look at some of the conspiracy theory rhetoric on the Web spawned by the work of Harris and others, it becomes all too easy to dismiss the whole campaign as sour grapes. There is no smoking-gun evidence to support the conclusion that Hagel's landslide Senate victory in 2002 benefited from voter fraud. The same is true for several unexpected Republican victories in Georgia last year -- during which the entire state used touch-screen machines for the first time.
But Harris herself is no conspiracy nut. Her facts check out. Nor is she an ideologue. Her stories on voting machines are based not on her politics but on serious, in-depth investigative reporting. Since October, she's spoken to dozens of people in the voting world, from elections officials to "systems certifiers" to engineers whom she calls whistle-blowers. She's detailed some of her findings on her Web site, but she says they aren't the whole story -- which she'll tell in a book, "Black Box Voting," to be published in May.
The facts Harris and others lay out ought to give many election officials pause. Touch-screen voting machines aren't especially reliable; there are documented cases in which they have frozen, broken down and tabulated incorrectly during actual, binding elections. They're also not immune to hacks. Though voting companies will confidently tell you about their myriad security policies, the fact is that these machines run software, and software can be tampered with: An election result could be changed without anyone being the wiser. And perhaps worst of all, the machines and the companies that make them are shrouded in secrecy. What really happens in a touch-screen machine when you select your candidate? In most cases, everything probably goes as it should -- but there is no way to know for sure.
Indeed, the conspiracy theories, regardless of their validity, nevertheless highlight the main problem with electronic machines. Because they leave no paper trail -- the vote count is registered only electronically in the machine -- the results that the new machines deliver are open to dispute by people who have cause to be suspicious. For instance, Charlie Matulka, Hagel's Democratic opponent in Nebraska last year, believes that he might have won the race -- though the official count put him at about 15 percent of the vote.
Bev Harris doesn't believe that anything went wrong in Nebraska, but that's not the point. She wonders how you can prove that everything went well when what goes on inside a voting machine isn't accessible by the public.
The same problems are in play with respect to the Georgia elections. "I don't think that there was anything wrong, but I can't show that there wasn't," says David Dill, a computer scientist at Stanford University. Dill is trying to get Santa Clara County, the home of California's Silicon Valley, to reject electronic machines that don't produce a paper trail. "And it always frustrates me when I read a conspiracy theory and I can't find some way to dismiss it -- it bothers me that I can't show people that they're full of it."
Harris first became interested in elections last fall, when she read an article that detailed some problems with electronic voting systems -- specifically that the machines store their data in a way that isn't readily "auditable" and that they are made by companies that tend to be secretive about their processes and investors.
"Something just clicked," Harris says of reading that article, "and in this climate of a year of corporate shenanigans, I said, 'I'll just do a quick search to see who controls some of these companies.'"
Harris, who runs a P.R. firm in Seattle that does work for "unknown authors that need some publicity," had always hankered to do investigative journalism. She once publicized a book for Jack Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter, and his stories of investigative reporting had intrigued her.
She began by looking into Election Systems & Software, the world's largest election supply company, based in Omaha, Neb. Harris quickly found that ES&S was owned, in part, by a merchant banking holding company called the McCarthy Group and that the firm's chairman, Michael McCarthy, was Chuck Hagel's campaign treasurer. After searching news archives, Harris found that during Hagel's first campaign, in 1996, the Nebraska media reported that he had been president of ES&S -- which at the time was called American Information Systems -- between 1992 and 1995. But the articles suggested that Hagel was no longer affiliated with the voting equipment company. Harris saw election records that showed Hagel still holding between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in McCarthy, which owned about 25 percent of ES&S.
Harris had stumbled on what seemed to be a striking conflict of interest -- a U.S. senator owned a share in a company that built all the vote-counting machines in his state. She put up the relevant documents on her site, "and immediately I knew I'd hit a sore spot," she says, "because right away I got a threat letter from ES&S."
The letter from ES&S's attorneys demanded that Harris take down her article. "While you claim that your article is all based upon verifiable facts, even if true, which ES&S disputes, you should be aware that such 'facts,' or the implications therefrom, when presented in a false fashion, constitute defamation or defamation by implication as well as the privacy tort of false light," the attorneys said.
It's not clear what ES&S meant to convey by such a letter, but Harris didn't take down her article. "What I would certainly do if they launched a lawsuit is, we'd have a field day with discovery," she jokes now. ES&S did not return Salon's phone calls for comment.
Harris thought it odd that McCarthy's underlying assets, including the voting company, were not disclosed in Hagel's election filings, and she tipped off the Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress. Late in January, the paper reported that Hagel's omission might have constituted a Senate ethics "disclosure issue."
Did Nebraskans know of Hagel's affiliation with the voting company? Lou Ann Linehan, Hagel's chief of staff, says that the senator has been upfront with all of his business dealings. Although he owns a share in McCarthy, and McCarthy owns a share in ES&S, Linehan says there is "absolutely no affiliation" between the senator and the voting company. Hagel's indirect ownership of ES&S is tiny, his staff points out -- he owns "less than 2 percent" of McCarthy, and McCarthy owns only about a quarter of ES&S. Linehan denied there was any ethical problem with the way Hagel disclosed his McCarthy holdings. Members of Hagel's staff pointed to a letter to the Hill by William Canfield, a Senate ethics expert, that said that "Sen. Hagel has fully met his obligation, under the statute and the committee's guidance, in publicly disclosing this particular investment."
Linehan said there's nothing irregular about a person who used to run a voting-machine firm running for office. "Maybe if you're not from Nebraska and you're not familiar with the whole situation" you would have questions, she says. "But does it look questionable if there's a senator who is a farmer and now he votes on ag issues? Everybody comes from somewhere."
Nebraska was considered a "safe state" for Republicans in 2002. Most political commentators believed Hagel's opponents -- Phil Chase, an independent, John Graziano, a Libertarian, and Charlie Matulka, the Democratic candidate -- did not stand a chance. And according to the official count, Hagel trounced the opposition. He won about 400,000 votes -- Matulka, in second place, won just over 70,000.
Matulka believes that Hagel's landslide doesn't indicate a victory but something underhanded with the vote. "Why in the world would anybody with the election company want to run for office? It's like the fox in the henhouse -- they said they didn't do it, but they got feathers in the mouth." Matulka can't show any feathers, however: There appears to be not a shred of evidence to suggest that Hagel didn't honestly win his landslide, and the only thing Matulka has going for him is his hunch.
Then again, there's nothing to disprove what Matulka says, either. And that's the problem.
Many of the counties in Nebraska in 2002 used optical-scan ballots, in which votes cast on a paper ballot are counted in a machine; but several big counties, constituting a large part of the Nebraska electorate, used touch-screen machines. Matulka says that the lack of paper ballots that can be counted manually makes him suspicious. "What's so wrong with manually counting the votes?" he asks. "They've done away with the damn paper trail."
Linehan sees nothing wrong with the way the vote was conducted. "Nebraska is a very special place," she says, "and when you go to vote in Nebraska, the people at the polls know who you are. Sen. Hagel won by 83 percent of the vote, and there's no doubt he won by an overwhelming majority. And you get poll workers there who would -- if something was wrong, people would know what's going on."
According to elections firms and election officials, the software and hardware in voting machines is thoroughly inspected and tested before the systems are certified and put on the market for sale to county election directors. Doug Lewis, who heads the Election Center -- a nonprofit management division of the National Association of State Election Directors, which handles part of the voting-machine certification process -- said that "the likelihood of doing something to [a machine] without detection is very, very small."
Lewis says that if you have "malicious code in the system" -- such as a simplistic virus, perhaps, designed to change a vote cast for one candidate into one for his opponent -- the code will be caught in the testing phase of the certification process: "It will not compile right. The testing itself would discover this." Moreover, Lewis says, the testing labs simulate actual voting on each type of machine. The test, which is 163 hours long, "puts tens of thousands of votes into the system, and we know what the outcome is supposed to be."
Lewis says that no voting system ever designed has been perfect. If it's "created by man, it can be destroyed by man," he says. But he believes that several rounds of testing make the machines about as good as we can get them.
Harris finds that hard to believe. In the course of her research, she's uncovered what she says is evidence to suggest that the testing phase of the certification process is flawed. One person she holds up as an example is Dan Spillane, an engineer who worked on the software at a company that made electronic voting machines. Spillane says that national testing labs "are very much like Arthur Andersen in the Enron case": They don't do a very good job. The company Spillane worked for -- he prefers not to have the name published -- would pass systems "with problems that we knew about internally, problems with severity level 1, the highest" on to the testing labs, and the labs would certify the equipment. (Spillane was fired from the company, and he says he plans to sue the firm for wrongful termination.)
Lewis' claim that malicious software "won't compile" is also suspect. Malicious software abounds on computers; on every platform, in every application, from Microsoft Word to e-mail, are bad bits of code. There's no technical reason why one renegade coder at a voting company couldn't slip some pro-Republican or pro-Democratic code into his firm's systems. Computer scientists fear that malicious code can be written so as to evade detection during the testing process, going live only on Election Day.
And for each security procedure that a company might put in place to defeat such efforts, hackers will come up with more sophisticated methods to get around them, says Stanford's David Dill. Recently, worried about the possibility that paperless electronic voting machines will become the national standard, Dill decided to see what others in his field -- people who know about computers and the limits of their security -- could do to let election officials know of the danger.
"Almost any computer scientist I would walk up to would agree with me," says Dill. So he put up a statement of his beliefs regarding electronic voting, and he invited other computer scientists to sign on to it. The statement reads:
"Computerized voting equipment is inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering. It is therefore crucial that voting equipment provide a voter-verifiable audit trail, by which we mean a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy by the voter before the vote is submitted, and is difficult or impossible to alter after it has been checked. Many of the electronic voting machines being purchased do not satisfy this requirement. Voting machines should not be purchased or used unless they provide a voter-verifiable audit trail; when such machines are already in use, they should be replaced or modified to provide a voter-verifiable audit trail. Providing a voter-verifiable audit trail should be one of the essential requirements for certification of new voting systems."
The response to Dill's petition was remarkable. In a few weeks, he'd garnered more than 100 signatories, including some of the biggest names in computer security.
Dill recently learned that Santa Clara County is considering purchasing electronic machines that don't print out an audit trail, and he's become an outspoken local advocate against them. He says he's somewhat surprised that election officials haven't taken his and other technologists' concerns more seriously. "I must admit to a certain amount of frustration showing up at these county meetings and hearing that everyone's getting their information from the vendor," he says. "And basically I think that once you get out into the real world, nobody knows who these computer scientists are."
Still, Dill says, his group does "seem to be changing the equation" in Santa Clara, and he thinks that if the county goes the way he'd like -- forcing voting firms to put an audit trail into the machine --- other parts of the country may be more inclined to follow.
Harris has also been popularizing Dill's cause, because she fears that if paperless electronic machines aren't stopped, dire consequences will follow. I asked Harris if she wonders whether she could be too late -- whether there's already been an election in which an electronic machine has produced the wrong result.
"I have worries about Georgia," Harris said. In 2002, the entire state of Georgia used touch-screen machines provided by Diebold. Harris has found an FTP site run by Diebold that allowed anyone with access to the Internet to peruse what might have been important software files concerning the machines used in the state. It's unclear what files were on that site, but Harris wonders whether the programs, which could have been tampered with, were actually loaded onto the voting machines. More recently, Harris found that in an effort to fix a problem that was causing 5 percent of the machines in Georgia to freeze up, Diebold administered a software "patch" to all 22,000 machines in the state shortly before the November election. The patch -- which changes the code on the machine -- was certified "by phone," according to a Georgia election official quoted by Harris.
Joseph Richardson, a spokesman for Diebold, denied that a patch had been applied to the Georgia machines: "We have analyzed that situation and have no indication of that happening at all." In regard to the FTP site, he said, "Our review of this matter indicates there is no merit to the insinuations of security breaches in the Diebold Election Systems solutions. The old Global Election Systems site has been taken down because it contained old, out-of-date material. For 144 years, Diebold has been synonymous with security, and we take security very seriously in all of our products and services." (Georgia elections officials did not respond to phone calls for comment.)
Republicans enjoyed great success in Georgia last year. Defying pre-race polls, voters chose Sonny Perdue, the state's first Republican governor in 135 years, and, for the Senate, the Republican Saxby Chambliss over the incumbent Democrat Max Cleland. After the race, many pundits wondered what had caused the GOP sweep: Was it the president's nonstop campaigning? Had the Democrats dropped the ball on homeland security?
There's every reason to believe that an explanation can be found among those conventional theories. The problem with the widespread use of electronic voting machines, though, is that there's nothing to stop people from thinking that something else, something altogether baser than pure politics, got in the way.
About the writer Farhad Manjoo is a staff writer for Salon Technology & Business
.... DaveG, 2/20/03
Top
Provide Answers, Under
Oath, Or Decertify It: Irreparable Problems Exposed In November Election
[Diebold's election machines are used in 30 states and
five Canadian provinces]
Many more details, including more information for techies and reporters,
at:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/Georgia-fix.html
and
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/security.html,
with full text of interviews at http://www.blackboxvoting.org/patch-interviews.html
FEB 14 2003 -- In January 2003, a strange folder called "rob-georgia"
was found at Diebold Election Systems. Diebold is the firm that built and
programmed every voting machine in Georgia. Inside this "rob-georgia"
folder were three more folders. One had instructions to place new files in
the "GEMS" folder. GEMS is the Diebold program that manages
elections. Another folder instructed the user to replace some existing
GEMS files. A third folder instructed the user to replace Windows
operating system files with its contents and run a program.
A single, certified, and supposedly carefully examined version of the
actual vote-counting program is allowed on the voting machines. The new
Diebold voting machines in Georgia are computers, and people sometimes do
install file replacements on computers. It's called installing a
"patch" and usually repairs some minor bug, or adds new
features. But whenever files are replaced, there is potential for them to
trigger unexpected things. Sometimes, installing a program patch can cause
hidden programs to run in the background.
That's why the curiously named "rob-georgia" file and its
contents disturbed many people in the programming community. WHO was
replacing files, WHERE were they replacing files, WHY were they replacing
files?
WERE they replacing files?
Yes, it turns out, they were. Officials from the Georgia Secretary of
State's Office now admit that a program fix was administered to all 22,000
Georgia voting machines shortly before the November election, reportedly
to correct a problem with video screens freezing up. According to Michael
Barnes, of the Georgia Secretary of State's Election Office, Diebold
supplied memory cards with program patches on them, and then 20 teams of
technicians were deployed to drive around the state installing the patch,
which went into every one of the machines in all 159 counties.
Here's how it was done, according to Barnes, "The actual installation
was a matter of putting in a new memory card. It took about one and a half
minutes to boot up. They take the PCMCIA card, install it, and in the
booting up process the upgrade is installed."
Surely someone examined exactly what was on those memory cards that were
installing the new, "updated" program? According to Barnes, Wyle
Labs, an independent federal testing lab for voting machines, said the
patch did not need to be certified. "I don't know if there was ever a
written report by Wyle [about that]. It might have been by phone," he
adds.
Dr. Brit Williams, who is the independent examiner for Georgia's voting
machines, said it was not necessary to do a line by line examination of
what was on the cards containing the patch. "We were assured by the
vendor that the patch did not impact any of the things that we had
previously tested on the machine," he says.
Though nobody seems to have examined the computer code on the cards,
everybody insists that they never put the rob-georgia files on any voting
machines. Since the rob-georgia files were on a public web site, however,
anyone with a laptop could have downloaded the rob-georgia files to
install them on a substitute card. Surely, great care was taken to monitor
chain of custody every step of the way, from creating the cards to making
sure no one substituted a different one?
Bev Harris, the author of "Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the
21st Century," asked Dr. Williams what security measures had been
taken with the cards.
"That's a real good question," said Williams. "Like I say,
we were in the heat of the election. Some of the things we did, we
probably compromised security a little bit -- Let me emphasize we've gone
back since the election and done extensive testing on all this."
Harris asked Dr. Williams whether there was a digital signature, a method
used to flag unauthorized program changes. He said that the Diebold voting
machines are indeed protected by such a system. Certainly, then, this
digital signature was checked after the patches were installed?
Apparently not. Barnes indicated that Dr. Williams did it, but Dr.
Williams said that he examined the digital signature BEFORE the patch was
installed, when the machines arrived in Georgia, during the acceptance
screening. Some sort of spot-check was done after the patches were
installed, but the tests Dr. Williams described made no mention of a
digital signature check. But let's assume that a spot check of the digital
signature was done. Which machines were spot-checked, and where?
"What way would there be to make sure nothing had changed between the
time that you took delivery and the election?" asked Harris.
"Well there wouldn't -- there's no way that you can be absolutely
sure that nothing has changed," said Williams.
"Wouldn't it help to check that digital signature, or checksum, or
whatever, right before the election?" asked Harris. This would be a
way to ensure that no one tampered with the code on those patches, or
installed unauthorized programs at any other time prior to the election.
"Well that is outside of the scope of what some of the people there
can do," said Williams.
So there was a folder called rob-georgia, and hopefully "rob" is
a name and not a verb, but nobody used that folder, and no one at Diebold
has claimed responsibility for the rob-georgia folder, or even explained
what it was there for. All anyone knows is that rob-georgia was available
to anyone with a modem and it contained replacements pertaining to the
election program and the Windows operating system.
And there were files being replaced, all over Georgia, in fact, on all
22,000 voting machines, but no one ever examined exactly what was in the
replacement files. The security surrounding the memory cards used to patch
the machines is "a real good question" and in the heat of the
election maybe security was compromised a little bit, and apparently no
one bothered to check the digital signature, which flags unauthorized
program changes, at the time of the election.
But there's more: Diebold technicians now admit that they had parked a
whole bunch of Diebold voting machine files on a publicly available web
site that anyone could access. Surely none of these files were sensitive,
were they?
Let's put it this way: Diebold's unprotected FTP site contained exactly
the files most important to anyone intent on tampering with an election:
source codes, executable vote-counting programs, patches, hardware and
software specifications, technical drawings, database and ballot
configurations and testing protocols.
The official story: Touch Screens were freezing up in Georgia. Diebold
sent a program patch, it affected only the Windows operating system, there
was no need to examine the patch, no one used the unprotected FTP site, it
was impractical to check the digital signature to see if anyone had made
unauthorized program changes, and the election was a long time ago, so get
over it.
But some Georgia citizens are demanding answers. Not answers over the
telephone, or from a company press release, but specific answers, under
oath, fetched by subpoena, cross examined and exposed to the full depth
and breadth of discovery procedures. Some Georgia citizens want to make
sure this can never happen again.
One Georgia resident is looking for attorneys and irritated citizens in
each of Georgia's 159 counties to file multiple individual lawsuits all at
once.
Bev Harris, the author of "Black Box Voting," is just looking
for someone to answer a few questions about this. She's been told it's
none of her business.
-- "Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century" --
To interview Bev Harris, go through
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Top
System Integrity Flaw Discovered At Diebold Election Systems
By Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting www.blackboxvoting.com
Walk right in, sit right down. Replace vote-counting files with your own.
Feb 5, 2003: Yesterday, technicians and programmers for Diebold Election Systems, the company that supplied every single voting machine for the surprising 2002 results in the state of Georgia, the company that is preparing to convert the state of Maryland to its no- paper-trail computerized voting, admitted to a file-sharing system that amounts to a colossal security flaw.
"Technology transfer for updates!" This is among the benefits in the Diebold PowerPoint sales presentation given to the State of Georgia. Easy updating -- too easy, apparently.
In "Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century," author Bev Harris examines the integrity of current electronic voting systems. She recently installed a Whistleblowers page at her web site (
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/whistle.html
). "We've been getting about four new whistleblower reports a day," says Harris, "and some of them are quite serious." Like this:
Diebold Election Systems, which builds the AccuVote machines, both optical scan and touch-screen, was parking files on an unprotected public Internet location. Not a few files -- thousands of files; election files, hardware and software specifications, program files, voting program patches -- and sometimes, files with curious names. Though the address is obscure, whistleblowers found the FTP site using a simple Google search. A Global Election Systems web site, located at
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/2256/
contains a list of links like "History," "Press Releases," "Staff" and -- amazingly -- "FTP." The FTP button gave total access to anonymous users, allowing anyone to download or upload to the motherlode. The FTP site contained no copyright statement, asked for no user name, put locks on no directories. Visitors (or vote-riggers) from anywhere in the world could simply walk in the front door. (Have a look at part of the file directory:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/WalkRightIn.html
)
A person interested in tampering with an election would have to wonder why in the Sam Hill anyone would hand over what amounts to an instruction manual for vote-rigging to anyone who can navigate a Google search. "Sometimes our customers use the FTP site to transfer their own files," explains Guy Lancaster, whose web site,
http://www.guylancaster.com/guylancaster.html
, says that he developed and maintains the intranet web site for Global Election Systems, now called Diebold Election Systems. "It has been up quite some years. It started when it was
Global." "People go there from counties, cities, sometimes there is stuff there for state certification boards, federal certification, a lot of test material gets passed around," Lancaster explains. Here is part of the interview between Bev Harris and Guy Lancaster on Feb. 4, 2003:
Harris: "Do you know if your FTP site has ever had a security breach?" Lancaster: "I'm trying to think, for a security breach, I think it got shut down by
someone. Recently someone shut it down." Harris: "Would you know if someone came to your ftp, or replaced files at your ftp?" Lancaster: "Well, we have recently just discontinued what's considered anonymous access, so people could before, yes, but now we use a different means." Harris: "It was available during the 2002 election?" Lancaster: "I think so."
In fact, according to "Black Box Voting" whistleblowers, Diebold Election Systems' FTP site was unprotected until around January 29, 2003. And, according to an e-mail that Harris obtained dated October 3, 2000 written by Lancaster, he expressed concern about lack of security in this file-sharing method more than two years ago. In this e-mail, Lancaster admits that his company was allowing people to access a service over "an untrusted network," the Internet. He pointed out that the information could easily get redirected by a third party to another server. Apparently in both Election 2000 and Election 2002, Diebold / Global Election Systems had not devised any way to make the file-sharing system secure. These files, freely shared and sometimes snagged from the FTP and e-mailed to election workers and technicians, included hardware and software specifications, election results files, the vote-counting program itself, and "replacement files" for Diebold's GEMS vote-counting system and for the Windows software underlying the system. In fact, anyone with a modem could have hunkered over a computer to download, upload or slightly change and overwrite the files on Diebold's FTP site. Some files had simple "zip" passwords attached to them, but dozens had no protection at all. And even the passwords, Lancaster admitted in his October, 2000 e-mail, were easy to guess. "I can find no way of authenticating a PIN without revealing enough information to crack it," he says, adding that he was beginning to think it was impossible to make the system secure.
"Black Box Voting" whistleblowers voiced concerns about many of the files. Harris can't read a lick of code, but apparently computer enthusiasts have been surreptitiously downloading the Diebold files for some time now, examining them quietly. When the "Black Box Voting" whistleblower page went live recently, geek-reports began flowing.
One whistleblower called in with a terse question: "Why would we want a utility that can duplicate memory cards in optical scan voting machines? Are the cards serialized? Are they serialized internally? Is it hard-wired into the card?" Apparently something he'd read in those FTP files had gotten him all riled up about a memory card duplication utility. So Harris asked another of her sources, a voting machine engineer, about
this. "Oh no, no, no." He said. "That wouldn't meet FEC regulations!" Another "Black Box Voting" whistleblower who had visited Diebold's FTP site wants urgently to find out if the company has an election technician named Rob. So Harris asked Guy
Lancaster. Harris: "Do you have a technician named Rob who works anywhere?" Lancaster: "There is a Rob doing some kind of West Coast sales." Harris: "Do the salespeople have access to this FTP site too?" Lancaster: "Yes, the salespeople have access to it. A lot of the purpose is to keep them up to date." Harris: So technicians, and salespeople, and counties, cities and states and election workers and all of the staff for Diebold." Lancaster: "As needed."
Another whistleblower pointed out that one of the names on the Diebold FTP files, Kerry Martin, happens to be the same name as the poll worker who did press interviews after the flubbed Florida primary election in September 2002, when ES&S machines (Diebold's main competitor) did not operate properly.
From the Miami Herald, Sept. 15, 2002: "When the touch screens died at Thena C. Crowder Elementary School in Miami, the precinct was closed for five hours until a troubleshooter arrived, poll worker Kerry Martin said," according to a Sept. 15 article in the Miami Herald.
From the Sun-sentinel & The Associated Press: Sept. 10, 2002 - In a predominantly black Miami neighborhood, voting at one precinct didn't begin until 11:45 a.m., nearly five hours after polls were supposed to open. Officials said 500 people left without voting. At a nearby precinct, the touchscreen machines stopped working at 11:50 a.m. and were shut down for nearly five hours, causing more than 100 would-be voters to be turned away, election worker Kerry Martin said. So Harris asked Lancaster who Kerry Martin is. Lancaster: "Kerry Martin, he's based in McKinney." Harris: "What is his position?" Lancaster: "I'll log in and look him up. He is an Election Support Specialist for Diebold." Harris: What does an Election Support Specialist do?" Lancaster: "Election support is mostly helping with software." Harris: "Was Kerry Martin in Florida last fall?" Lancaster: "I don't know."
So Harris called the McKinney, Texas headquarters of Diebold Election Systems and spoke with Kerry Martin.
Harris: "I have a couple questions and got your name. you are a technician, or a programmer?" Martin: "No, no, I handle the sales." Harris: "You don't do technical stuff? I've been told that you have tech files under your name on the FTP site." Martin: "I do sales and do tech support." Harris: "Were you in Florida last September?" Martin: "No, I was in Norfolk." Harris: "Don't all the programs used in these machines need to be certified? It seems that people are uploading and downloading files at this FTP site and using them in elections." Martin: "Certain hardware things and certain software things, most of them, you only are allowed to use the certified version." Harris: "Why, then, would you have files that say 'replace the files with these?'" Martin: "Replace all the files with these -- normally that could be a windows thing." Harris: "I got an e-mail that you guys have a file on your FTP that says "Replace the GEMS files with these." Martin: "Replace the GEMS files . I don't know what that would
be." GEMS is an acronym for Global Election Management System, and the GEMS files include the vote-counting program itself. Harris: "Was there a guy named Rob working in Georgia?" Martin: "No that would be Keith Long, he's the guy who worked in Georgia."
Harris called Bob Urosevich, CEO of Diebold Election Systems (also founder of ES&S, a competing voting machine company). After her third call to ask for his comments, his assistant said Urosevich had the message. "If he wants to talk to you, he'll call you," she said. Apparently Urosevich had nothing to say about the election security glitch. Tech-savvy citizens, however, have a lot to say about the risks of an open FTP site, and the files it contains.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/WalkRightIn.html
is adding citizen comments and concerns about the Diebold security breach, and technicians continue to contribute file information to the site from Diebold's FTP files.
-- Bev Harris, author of Black Box Voting:
Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century (http://www.blackboxvoting.org).
This article is copyright by Bev Harris, but permission is granted for
reprint in print, email, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
For interview, contact: 425-228-7131)
....JohnK, 2/6/03
top
top
Top
South
Florida's voting machine trouble ... (Reno's
complaint)
...According to the draft document, headlined ''Suspected
Problems with Florida's Electronic Touch-Screen Voting Machines,'' the
campaign has consulted with an expert who has studied the machines in
use.Among the allegations: Touch-screen machines suffer from a buildup
of smudges that create inaccuracies as more people vote; some voters
saw the wrong candidate's name light up when they touched the screen;
many machines may not have properly calculated votes; and some
machines had more than the typical percentage of ballots without a
vote in the gubernatorial primary.Election Systems and Software, the
company that manufactures the iVotronic machines used in Miami-Dade
and Broward counties, could not be reached late Saturday. Last week,
ES&S said in a statement that its machines ``accurately captured
100 percent of the votes which were cast. No votes were lost or not
counted.'' 9/15/02
- The county elections
supervisor's husband worked for and consults for ES&S, a maker of
voting equipment that the county may buy.
While Deborah Clark worked as a top official in the Pinellas
Supervisor of Elections Office, her husband's employer was awarded
more than $400,000 in business with the office.
Now, Clark heads the office, and that company, Elections Systems
& Software, is a leading contender to land a lucrative contract --
worth as much as $15-million -- to sell new voting machines to
Pinellas County, records show.
Touchscreens: Manipulating totals
would be too easy
How wonderful that "foolproof" touchscreen voting has
been approved by Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
It is also verification proof, with no pesky ballots to recount if
the election of Gov. Bush is disputed.
As a system programmer, I know all too well how easy it will be to
alter, manipulate or replace the final electronic count of the
election results. Even if you hold a receipt of how you voted, what is
there to recount?
Republicans will not have to bother to even vote to win this
election!
BRYAN MORRIS,Maitland,8/21/01 (letter in Tal Dem)
top
Imagine if someone suggested that checking accounts or wills or court
records or birth certificates or school records would no longer exist
in a hard copy format, nor would it be possible to make one. They
could only exist in cyberspace. Not a chance.
Yet, the cyberspace touch-screen voting system that is being proposed
is precisely that.
A system that allows for two different ways to count an election
(computer results vs. hard copy) will cause disputes in a close
election. But eliminating the ability to dispute the election results
is far worse.
Optical scanners that only accept a correct mark by the voter are
cheaper, equally or more accurate and offer manual recount protection.
Supporters of touch screens are vouching for the absolute competence
and integrity of cyberspace and the government. What planet are they
from?
Who of us would take $10 from an ATM that refused a written receipt?
Why would we want a voting system that would offer just as many
doubts?
Samuel F., PLANTATION, letter
to Sun Sentinel
The Carter-Ford election reform plan sets forth 13 important policy
recommendations, including uniform registration, provisional
ballots, holiday voting, restoring felons' voting rights, 2% error
rate limits, voting machine standards, valid vote standards, and
delays in TV network projections. We support all of these
recommendations. Congress needs to get to work immediately to fix
the system in time for the 2002 elections, which will soon be upon
us. (demdailynews 8/4/01)
Florida is getting ready to purchase computer voting systems that have
no paper trail. We won't have to worry about recounts ever
again. We won't have to worry whether our vote has been counted or
not - because we'll never be able to find out. Another grand idea
from Bush Inc. -- I saw the following emails and had to send them
in. Please post these on your Tampa Page.
...Brad R, Tampa 6/20/01
Please read below and contact Pam Iorio and tell her this is not acceptable. Then contact your Tampa friends and tell them to call her too. I have tested software for 15 years and what Bill is saying is absolutely correct:
LETTER TO THE EDITORS AND OTHERS:
I just got back from a demo of the systems Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio of Hillsborough County is looking at to replace the Punch Card systems. Before I go into what I saw, I need to give a quick background on myself. I have been the computer software business for thirty years. In that time I have worked on embedded processors like the one used in the Touch Screen systems. I just got off contract with a company what has a scanner that scans luggage for explosives at airports. A couple years ago I worked on a two-story high satellite named Terra that went up in Dec. 1999. So I know the current technology in the embedded processors used today.
I have no problem with the optical scan systems with scanners at a Precinct level. They have a paper trail. Not only do they quickly report back the results and reject double votes, but they also have the original ballots that on a spot check basis can validate the reported votes versus the paper originals.
The problem I have is with the Touch Screen Systems Ms. Ioria is pushing. There is no paper trail with the THREE systems she demonstrated June 14, 2001. I talked for about five minutes to Ms. Ioria about the lack of a paper trail and voter fraud. The three systems she showed are the ones the State of Florida is about to certify.
The Touch Screen systems load the information for a vote and program updates from a central point. IT WOULD BE EASY to rig an election without a paper trail. I pointed out to Ms. Ioria that ALL acceptable accounting systems have checks and balances. It is funny that the Touch Screen Systems Florida is looking at do not have any checks and balances. If Ms. Ioria had a private business would she find acceptable that the Accounts Payable person could write checks with out any checks and balances at all?
I pointed out to Ms. Ioria the problem with the Felon purge in this last election. The party in power picked a company that was very supportive of the party in power and they worked together to purge as many voters of the other party as they could. Now that same party in power is picking the NEW equipment and companies for the next election.
The people programming and the local people feeding the parameters for the Touch Screen both have the ability to commit voter fraud. For example, a low level technician who believes in party A could set the parameters for half the Touch Screens in a heavy party B precinct so all votes for candidate B get recorded for candidate A or small candidate C. Consider Duval counties three precincts with over 10,000 double punch votes. All it would have taken is two people to destroy 10,000 valid punch cards in less than a hour.
In my talk with Ms. Ioria, she said nobody had shown her a Touch Screen system with a paper trail. In less than 10 minutes on the Net I found one, Gladstone & Smith Company out of New Mexico. Also I found from a Missouri newspaper a quote from their law. "Missouri law should allow for the use of electronic "touch-screen" voting systems in Missouri, if certified for use by the Missouri Secretary of State. Such system should provide for a paper trail for each ballot cast."
From an article from the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, December 4, 2000 titled The Risks of Touch-Screen Balloting
"Much more serious objections came from Dr. Peter G. Neumann, and he's certainly not someone to argue with lightly: He's principal scientist at the Computer Science Lab at SRI International in Menlo Park, chairman of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Committee on Computers and Public Policy and author of a book called "Computer-Related Risks," among many other distinctions. Among his areas of expertise is the problem of election security.
In essence, he argues that the challenge of ensuring the integrity of elections conducted on electronic equipment is much greater than my column suggested. In fact, he describes touch-screen systems as "disasters waiting to happen -- with enormous opportunities for fraud and accidents that are very difficult to detect and almost impossible to rectify."
Through Neumann I also heard from Rebecca Mercuri, a computer scientist who recently completed a Ph.D. dissertation on "Electronic Vote Tabulation Checks & Balances." In laying out a perspective similar to Neumann's, she focused in particular on the absence of an audit trail with electronic systems:
"It is essential to elections that there be an alternative method for independently verifying that the votes cast correspond to the totals reported. Since I (as well as many 12-year-olds) can write programs that accept one input value, record a different one and report yet another, computer systems can be no more trusted to provide their own verification than can a fox guarding the hen house.""
I found tons of articles on the net about Touch Screen systems that lack paper output and the security risk they present.
Contact Pam Iorio County Center - 16th Floor · 601 E. Kennedy Blvd. · Tampa, FL 33602 (813) 272-5850 · fax(813) 272-7043 ·
Email:info@votehillsborough.org
Thank you, William Sterner carsch44@excite.com
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