Election Meltdown '06

[Jim]

 

nutty program

 

I'm a software engineer, and I'm telling you all: don't trust this software. It can be hacked, misused, and abused, and who knows how well it was tested in the first place (there are always bugs that software developers miss anyways - with testing or not).

 

Not being a computer geek, what then is the best compromise for accuracy and efficiency of counting? Is the bubble-sheet and scan machine sufficiently accurate and precise?

Edited November 10, 2006 by Jim

[counterfeitfake]

I'm a software engineer. There are absolutely ways that electronic voting can be made to work securely and accurately. Software operates spacecraft and nuclear reactors and does all kinds of way more delicate and critical things.

 

But it's not being done right now. Diebold sure as hell doesn't know how. And I'm not sure there's even a strong enough case for it- sometimes, "if it ain't broke"...

 

I'm really amazed at the problems we've had with electronic voting. I assumed that when it actually came into play, it would be overseen by people who knew what they were doing and would make sure it was done right. With something as important as VOTING, I figured this would surely be the case. But, clearly, no.

 

I also assumed when we did something as obviously important and critical as invading Iraq, smart competent people would be making the plans. Is this just what they call "becoming jaded"?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

I'm skeptical about computer voting machines in general but, even if there might be some reason to us them I think we should talk about the manufacturer.

 

In my view, Diebold is 100% disqualified based on their clear record of dishonesty or incompetence. Consider that on more than one occasion they publicly asserted that their machines could not be hacked and some hackers performed a demonstration hack in short order. Consider also their past assertions that they could not make machines that produced a printed receipt while they make bank machines that do exactly that. Think about it: security and verification are the number one and two things that matter in a voting machine, are they not?

 

Forget the fact that Diebold is a major Republican donor and prior to the last election they said they were going to deliver Ohio to Bush. Would any of us hire ANY contractor who had been so completely wrong about their product and its capabilities in such fundamental ways?

 

Electronic systems could be manipulated in very insidious ways. We can not trust them.

 

Here is an example. There are 100,000 registered voters. 60,000 actually vote. A hacker electronically fabricates votes for say 5,000 of the remaining 40,000 - enough to turn an election.

 

Where would the paper trail be? Logs of requests to a server? The requests could be made to look legit.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

I'm a software engineer. There are absolutely ways that electronic voting can be made to work securely and accurately. Software operates spacecraft and nuclear reactors and does all kinds of way more delicate and critical things.

 

But it's not being done right now. Diebold sure as hell doesn't know how. And I'm not sure there's even a strong enough case for it- sometimes, "if it ain't broke"...

 

I'm really amazed at the problems we've had with electronic voting. I assumed that when it actually came into play, it would be overseen by people who knew what they were doing and would make sure it was done right. With something as important as VOTING, I figured this would surely be the case. But, clearly, no.

 

I also assumed when we did something as obviously important and critical as invading Iraq, smart competent people would be making the plans. Is this just what they call "becoming jaded"?

 

There's a lot of shitty software out there. I'm amazed anything works sometimes.

 

I don't trust the people writing this software, nor do I trust the people installing and running it. There are hacks and backdoors to just about any system.

 

In this case we are talking about tens of thousands of client applications connecting to servers from diffuse locations.

[counterfeitfake]

Of course I agree there is a lot of shitty software out there. For secure voting we're talking about something that is not in the same league as Microsoft Office or even Windows. I think the Diebold systems right now ARE in the same league.

 

Don't forget that paper can be hacked too. There is no system that is absolutely secure.

[mattp]

Counterfeit, you are also assuming that the good men and women at Diebold are actually TRYING to make machines that do the job right. I think that, in light of their history, such an assumption is highly suspect at best.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Of course I agree there is a lot of shitty software out there. For secure voting we're talking about something that is not in the same league as Microsoft Office or even Windows. I think the Diebold systems right now ARE in the same league.

 

Don't forget that paper can be hacked too. There is no system that is absolutely secure.

 

At least paper can be physically examined. It's not just bits on a magnetic storage disk.

[ClimbingPanther]

So you believe electronic data is metaphysical?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

So you believe electronic data is metaphysical?

 

It makes me nervous.

[sexual_chocolate]

So you believe electronic data is metaphysical?

 

Everything is metaphysical.

[counterfeitfake]

It seems a strange position for a software engineer to take- CRC checksums, RAID mirroring and striping, there are plenty of ways to protect data and verify it to be correct.

 

I have no specific knowledge about Diebold, just that they seem to be a bunch of fuckups. They've had responsibility for what should be the biggest technological advance in the history of voting, and they just can't deliver. What is that saying- never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity?

[mattp]

Did you read my post from page 1? Not only have they been unable to make a machine that can't be hacked, but they actually said they couldn't make a voting machine that can reliably produce a printed receipt although they make bank machines! Clearly, the demands on a voting machine are nothing compared to the demands on a bank machine, and we'd be very happy with an error rate that was even 100 times that of the error rate with bank machines!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

It seems a strange position for a software engineer to take- CRC checksums, RAID mirroring and striping, there are plenty of ways to protect data and verify it to be correct.

 

There are plenty of ways to corrupt the data. And with something as important and high-profile as the elections in the US, the "best minds" would be on the job looking for ways to do just that.

 

As I said above, I would most fear ways to insert manufactured votes that look legit.

[mattp]

I'm with you, KJK. They can lose ballots on the way to the collection center, too, but it would be easier to trace.

[Peter_Puget]

We'll need a paper trail for this one.

[cj001f]

We'll need a paper trail for this one.

 

You always struck me as the magnetic tape type.

[Jim]

 

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

 

[Gary_Yngve]

http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/Workshops/Voting/slides/slides.html

[enelson]

this is and email from a friend of mine at goergetown law, thought you all might be interested in some more first had knowledge into this...

 

"

I've never been a conspiracy theorist. I was pissed off in 2000, just like

all of you, but I didn't really believe that anyone could steal an election.

I had a little more faith in democracy. In 2004, I didn't believe that the

problems in Ohio were a big deal, or that anyone created them on purpose.

But today, I saw it with my own eyes, and I'm sorry for doubting all of you

who believed in the fraud when I didn't.

 

I volunteered all morning at the Maryland State Democratic Party Voter

Protection Hotline. The party lit-dropped over the weekend, and one flier

told people to call our number if they had trouble voting today. I thought

I'd be bored all day, but I wanted to volunteer anyway, because a bunch of

us from Georgetown Law were going as a group. I thought I'd be bored because

I believed people didn't really have problems voting. Maybe I was deluded

because I vote absentee, or because my home state (Washington, baby!) tends

to have smooth elections. My first call of the day was an easy one, just a

voter who needed to find her polling place. Unfortunately, things quickly

went downhill from there. Before the hour was up, we started getting calls

from the first of dozens of poll watchers at precincts with broken machines.

Poorly-trained poll workers couldn't figure out how to turn on the voting

machines or the electronic poll books they were using to see if voters were

registered.

 

When people called with problems, we entered them into our database, and a

small red flag appeared on a digital map of Maryland for each complaint,

with a message sent immediately to the democratic election lawyer in charge

of that county, who'd then dispatch another volunteer lawyer to try to sort

things out. When I logged on just before seven am, there were four flags.

When I left just after two pm, there were hundreds. We had maybe fifteen

phone lines, and I personally talked to at least five people who, while

voting, saw their touch-screen machines incorrectly log their democratic

votes as votes for the republican in each race. One person I talked to had

to hit cancel and change her vote SIX TIMES. Another had the same problem in

every single race on her ballot. One voter pointed out the error to the poll

worker present, and the Diebold representative on-site, and even the Diebold

employee couldn't explain what was going wrong.

 

The volunteer next to me logged a call from the biggest democratic precinct

in the state, where every single voting machine had crashed. I logged a call

from a precinct where nine of nine machines were down, and the poll workers

passed out provisional ballots instead, for THREE HOURS, until the machines

were fixed. I got a call from a disabled voter, who told me there were ten

people waiting to use the only handicap-accessible voting machine at a

precinct located in a retirement home! She waited over an hour to vote, but

other voters didn't, and I talked to people who had to leave the hour-long

lines to go to chemotherapy, or dialysis, and they were pissed as hell about

it. Another voted called to say that the only handicap-accessible voter

machine in his precinct had been broken for an hour. One poll watcher said

the election authority forgot to deliver extension cords, so they couldn't

plug in any of their machines.

 

In Maryland, you're only required to show ID at the polls if you registered

via mail and haven't voted in person before. Or I should say, that's what

the law requires, because some callers complained that poll workers were

making them go back to their cars to get their driver's licenses, even at

the same precinct they'd been voting at for years. Another person I talked

was told by his poll worker that there was "some sort of card" he had to

fill out before he could vote, and that the precinct was mysteriously out of

these cards. They told him to come back and vote in three hours, but of

course, like so many people I talked to, he had to go to work, couldn't go

back to the polls, and was pissed off that he couldn't vote. I talked to one

poll watcher who said people were making everyone in line fill out a 'voter

verification form,' which asked for their names, addresses, and social

security numbers. There's no such form, and this was just a way to harass

people and scare them about voting, and it's blatantly illegal.

 

Let's not even talk about the "sample voter ballots" republican volunteers

were passing out. This was a glossy list of all the local democratic

candidates, and then at the top of the list pictures of the republican

governor and senate candidates, implying that the local officials endorsed

the republican governor and senate candidate. In fact, these popular local

officials, like the county executive in one of the Baltimore suburbs, did

just the opposite, and denounced the lying sample voter ballots when they

first appeared yesterday. One of the people passing out the forms told a

poll watcher that the republican coordinated campaign offered him a hundred

bucks to pass them out for the day, and they brought him, and five bus loads

of people, from a Philadelphia HOMELESS SHELTER to do it. The republican

senate candidate is named Michael Steele, and he's been running a great

campaign, until now, because in the last week he put signs up all over the

city saying "Steele – Democrat." He knows Maryland is a blue state in a blue

year, and he's lying about his party because he knows people wouldn't vote

for him otherwise.

 

I talked to so many people who left the voting lines that I no longer have

faith in Maryland's elections. I don't know who is going to win here

tonight, but there's no way to know if they deserved to win, no way to know

who most Maryland voters really wanted to vote for. I don't know much about

who runs Maryland's elections, and because it's a blue state I assume

they're a democrat. After tonight, though, they did such a poor job that

they need to be thrown out of office. My faith in that democracy, in the

little old state of Maryland, is seriously injured.

 

I've never believed in conspiracies before, but after today, it's sure hard

not to."

[Fairweather]

I like the optical scan heavy-paper ballots we use here is Pierce County. Simple, and a clear record of my vote. Anyone who can't fill one out properly probably should not be voting anyhow. My polling place offered me a chance to use the one new touch screen machines they had off in the corner, but I declined.

 

I'm not sure how MattP's Diebold/right wing conspiracy meshes with Dru's Diebold/Chavez/left conspiracy, but I share both of their concerns. I think an even bigger problem in the short-term with the new touch-screen equipment is the simple fact that older/elderly voters are intimidated by computers. My grandmother actually sat out this vote because her poll location had the new touch screens (exclusively) during the primary and she found them to be "confusing" and "irritating". She's 92.

[Peter_Puget]

I like the optical scan heavy-paper ballots we use here is Pierce County. Simple, and a clear record of my vote. Anyone who can't fill one out properly probably should not be voting anyhow. My polling place offered me a chance to use the one new touch screen they had off in the corner, but I declined.

 

I'm not sure how MattP's Diebold/right wing conspiracy meshes with Dru's Diebold/Chavez/left conspiracy, but I share both of their concerns. I think an even bigger problem in the short-term with the new touch-screen equipment is the simple fact that older/elderly voters are intimidated by computers. My grandmother actually sat out this vote because her poll location had the new touch screens (exclusively) during the primary and she found them to be "confusing" and "irritating". She's 92.

 

Don't you think that the basic sentiment of the first paragraph equally applies to the second?

[tvashtarkatena]

Vote by mail. It's the most fool proof method.

[Fairweather]

I like the optical scan heavy-paper ballots we use here is Pierce County. Simple, and a clear record of my vote. Anyone who can't fill one out properly probably should not be voting anyhow. My polling place offered me a chance to use the one new touch screen they had off in the corner, but I declined.

 

I'm not sure how MattP's Diebold/right wing conspiracy meshes with Dru's Diebold/Chavez/left conspiracy, but I share both of their concerns. I think an even bigger problem in the short-term with the new touch-screen equipment is the simple fact that older/elderly voters are intimidated by computers. My grandmother actually sat out this vote because her poll location had the new touch screens (exclusively) during the primary and she found them to be "confusing" and "irritating". She's 92.

 

Don't you think that the basic sentiment of the first paragraph equally applies to the second?

 

Not at all. Paper ballots (which are subsequently fed into a reader) don't confuse anyone. A touch screen does.

[Mr_Phil]

Speaking of confusing and irritating ...

[mattp]

I'm not sure how MattP's Diebold/right wing conspiracy meshes with Dru's Diebold/Chavez/left conspiracy, but I share both of their concerns.

 

Like I said, Fairweather, for the purposes of this discussion we can ignore the fact that the owner or President or whoever he was of Diebold said he was setting out to deliver Ohio to Bush two years ago, and we can ignore the fact that the problems seem overwhelmingly to have arisen in Democratic voting districts, These folks at Diebold said they could not produce reliable machines that printed receipts and they said their machines could not be hacked. Both were ridiculous statements. End of story.

 

I'm with you on those color-in-the-bubble ballots. They are foolproof, recountable, and tabulated immediately by optical scanners. What could be better?

 

Perhaps we agree here that election reform would be a good project for the new "bipartisan" political machine? Election financing reform seems to be beyond their grasp as every time they enact a new law the powers that be find a way around it, but reform/refinement of the mechanics of elections ought to be attainable.