Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole

This was recently posted at blackboxvoting.org. The scary part is that the central tabulator is the machine that receives the votes from individual touch screen terminals! What’s more, here in CA, Gov. Swarzenegger froze the funds, allocated by Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, which would have paid for increased scrutiny of the voting system.

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.

Wired News: E-Vote Machines: Secret Testing

The three companies that certify the nation’s voting technologies operate in secrecy and refuse to discuss flaws in the ATM-like machines to be used by nearly one in three voters in November.

Despite concerns over whether the touch-screen machines can be trusted, the testing companies won’t say publicly if they have encountered shoddy workmanship. They say they are committed to secrecy in their contracts with the voting machines’ makers — even though tax money ultimately buys or leases the machines.

Washington > Campaign 2004 > A Rule to Avert Balloting Woes Adds to Them” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/06/politics/campaign/06vote.html?hp”>The New York Times > Washington >A Rule to Avert Balloting Woes Adds to Them (Free registration required).

Provisional voting, the centerpiece of the Help America Vote Act that Congress passed in 2002, will be put into effect across the nation in the coming presidential election in an effort to ensure that more votes are counted…

…In the primary in Chicago, one in 90 ballots was provisionally cast. The majority of the 93 percent that were thrown out were disqualified because of technical errors caused by election workers; these included more than 1,200 ballots filed in the wrong precinct. Some 2,400 were discounted because affidavits were incompletely or incorrectly filled out. Only 416 provisional votes were ultimately counted.

This is crazy. The Help America Vote Act put into affect a good rule, then ends up disenfranchising MORE voters?!

[Politech] More on electronic voting, security, and seeing source code

This posting to the email list “Politech” describes the differences between “Direct-Recording Electronic” (DRE) voting and other electronic voting systems.

It is important to differentiate between “electronic voting”, which has
immense promise to make voting more accessible to many people, as well as
improving the efficiency and accuracy of the voting process, and
“Direct-Recording Electronic” voting systems, a type of electronic voting
system that record votes _only_ electronically, with no human verified
physical record, which raise many concerns, and have had numerous
operational problems in actual use, leading to (for example) decertification
of DRE’s in California.

Washington > Campaign 2004 > Lost Record ‘02 Florida Vote Raises ‘04 Concern” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/campaign/28vote.final.html”>Lost Record ‘02 Florida Vote Raises ‘04 Concern. By Abby Goodnough, NYT July 28, 2004 (login required).

Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.

The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.

In other news, Paul Krugman, in today’s NYT op-ed section, dropped another FL bomb: “Jeb Bush insists that electronic voting machines are perfectly reliable, but The St. Petersburg Times says the Republican Party of Florida has sent out a flier urging supporters to use absentee ballots because the machines lack a paper trail and cannot “verify your vote.”"

I haven’t been able to verify this little tidbit, but it sure is interesting. I just volunteered to work at the polls in November. Shouldn’t you?!

House Cmte. Hearing on Electronic Voting Security [requires RealOne Player]
The House Administration Committee holds this hearing on the security of electronic voting systems. 11:00 AM.
7/7/2004: WASHINGTON, DC. 3 hours.

Witnesses addressing the issues of “direct-recording electronic” (DRE) voting machines include Britain J. Williams, professor emeritus of computer science and IT at Kenesaw State University, Michael I. Shamos, with the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, Avi Rubin, director of Johns Hopkins UniversityÕs Information Security Institute, and Tadayoshi Kohno of the UC San Diego Cryptography and Security Laboratory.

An an article in Government Computer News on the hearing:
Lots of questions, few clear answers on e-voting
By William Jackson
07/07/04.

The Register also did two stories on electronic voting this week:
E-voting security: looking good on paper? By Thomas C Greene.
7th July 2004; and
E-voting security: getting it right By Thomas C Greene.
8th July 2004.

League of Women Voters drops support of e-vote machines
By Rachel Konrad, Associated Press, USA Today,
Posted 6/14/2004 7:25 PM.

The League of Women Voters rescinded its support of paperless voting machines on Monday after hundreds of angry members voiced concern that paper ballots were the only way to safeguard elections from fraud, hackers or computer malfunctions.

Opinion > Making Votes Count: Gambling on Voting” href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/opinion/13SUN1.html?ex=1402459200&en=40e4afe91f2a555f&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND”>Opinion: Making Votes Count: Gambling on Voting.
New York Times, June 13, 2004.

Dan Gillmor points to this NYT editorial that compares standards for gambling machines to the lack of standards and testing and regulation for e-voting machines. He notes that the editorial page is doing much more serious reporting than the newspaper’s “news” staff.

ATAC: Abusable Technologies Awareness Center

This looks like quite a useful blog. Their goal is to “provide current and accurate information about technology that oversteps its bounds.” The list of panelists is quite impressive and, if the first two posts are any proof, there is quite a bit of interesting discussion going on here (see for example: The “right” kind of challenge to e-voting security and Open Source won’t save e-voting)

The Open Voting Consortium

Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development, maintenance, and delivery of open voting systems for use in public elections.

Read more from the NYT magazine story, “A Really Open Election”
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