A different kind of hackery

December 16, 2005

There are plenty of people who follow Diebold and suspect voting machines closer than I do, but this story, brought to my attention by a reader in Florida, adds to the already considerable cause for concern.

Voting machines used in four Central Florida counties might be flawed.

There’s new evidence that computer hackers could change election results without anyone knowing about it, WESH 2 News reported.

The supervisor of elections in Tallahassee tested voting machines several times over the last several months, and on Monday, his workers were able to hack into a voting machine and change the outcome. He said that same thing might have happened in Volusia County in 2000.

The big controversy revolves around a little black computer card that is smaller than a floppy disk and bigger than a flash drive. The card is inserted into voting machines that scan paper ballots. The card serves as the machine’s electronic brain.

But when Ion Sancho, Leon County’s Supervisor of Elections, tested the Diebold system and allowed experts to manipulate the card electronically, he could change the outcome of a mock election without leaving any kind of trail. In other words, someone could fix an election and no one would know.

Sancho added that he now believes someone with access changed vote totals in Volusia County in 2000. “Someone with access to the vote center in Volusia County put it on a memory card and uploaded it into the main system,” Sancho said.

As John Cole explained very well this morning, there’s simply no reason for this to be an ideological fight between the left and right.

At any rate, I have really decided this electronic voting movement is not a good thing- at least for now. I just don’t think that a system this open to fraud, with or without a paper trail (and to make matters worse, most don’t give receipts), is a good idea, and I rush to embrace every new technology there is. Furthermore, as I have stated before, the simple fact that it erodes confidence in the electoral process should be reason enough to can it for now.

I agree wholeheartedly. I want to know, of course, just how many votes may have been changed in Volusia County — home to populous communities like Daytona Beach and Edgewater — in 2000 and 2004, but there’s a bigger issue here. These voting machines are everywhere and there are serious questions about their reliability. It’s a problem that undermines the democratic process and needs a remedy. Now.

It’s a brave new world. I suspect that our democracy ( at least in places with electronic voting and no paper trails ) will boil down to which side can hack the machine last. Huzzah!

  • “It’s a problem that undermines the democratic process and needs a remedy. Now.”

    The remedy: quash the story.

    It’s easy to do, in fact, given that the same folks who own the GOP own the media. Just keep the people ignorant, and things will go along just dandy.

  • This is the mother of all political issues.

    Nothing you or anyone else says, will have any impact if this issue is not resolved. Bush could be tried and convicted for war crimes at the Hague, and this issue would still undermine everything we hope to accomplish.

    Nothing we do matters if this is not resolved.

    Please put a link right up at the top of your very fine website, pointing to the best repository of information about the myriad problems of proprietary voting systems. I will leave it to you to figure out where that might be, but PLEASE do not let this issue slide down the page.

  • “needs a remedy”?? I believe that Diebold was a very large contributor to Bush/Cheney both in ’00 and ’04.
    Don’t you think that they’ve already “produced a remedy”????

  • This is a huge story. Diebold may not be around long–financial problems, fudging financials, etc.

    The only real reform is to allow voting over a three day period (preferably Friday, Saturday and Sunday), at a time of year with much more favorable weather potential than November, using hand marked ballots which provide carbon copy-type receipts, and then not requiring/allowing instantaneous results (results should be properly tabulated over a day or two, with each state’s results made public at the same time).

  • I believe this is exactly what happened to the voting in Ohio. The CEO of Diebold just quit his job this week to spend more time with his family. This is the same rat bastard that said he could deliver Ohio for Bush. I wonder why Diebold pulled out of North Carolina ? Someone needs to get to the bottom of this or elections are going to turn into a contest of who has the best hackers. Man it`s great living in Bush world !

  • No to carbon copy receipts. The ballot is supposed to be secret.

    All components of the recording and tabulating systems need to be open. There are going to be computers involved: all software needs to be open source.

  • I run a polling place in San Diego County, and the Diebold scanners (as opposed to the touch screen machines) worked fine the last two elections. They are quick and easy to use, and easy to double-check. They are easy for the poll workers to monitor, as the voter only feeds their “fill in the bubble” ballot into the machine at the end, with no tampering possible in the open. White there is a little black memory card that I remove and account for at the end of the night, there are also hundreds of clearly-voted ballots in the box at close of the polls.

    Despite my own opinion as to the credibility of the high-ups at Diebold, these machines seem to be a good option in between punch ballots and touch screens. I’m not sure why everyone’s not jumping on this specific bandwagon.

  • We need links to the relevant news stories that have come out about this. My memory brings up stories about the 2004 votes in areas that used the scanning machines, reports that the polling data was wildly off, and the “counted” votes were all in Bush’s favor.

    Anyone out there that can point me in the correct direction?

  • Racerx and BuzzMon — If you get a chance check out The Brad Blog. This blog has dedicated itself almost entirely to the voting machine issue.

  • Just got word from a friend in Volusia Co.

    “Just back from the County Council Meeting where we WON and the county will keep a paper ballot trail.”

    : )

  • Jim: I believe the issue between Diebold and N.C. was the refusal on the part of Diebold to allow access to it’s proprietary software.

  • A voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT or VVPT) is not the same thing as a receipt. A receipt or copy should never be given to the voter. The reason giving the voter a receipt violates the secrecy requirement is that enables vote-buying and coercion. Having a copy of the ballot makes the voter vulnerable to demands from those who would try to influence his vote. For instance, “show us your receipt that you voted for X and we will give you $10” is not that farfetched of a scenario, nor too hard to imagine “show us your receipt that you voted for X and you get to keep your job”.

    What we get where I vote, and I think this is a good system, is a ballot stub with a serial number. That number is also printed on the paper ballot which I personally marked and deposited in the lockbox. In theory, it would be possible – by court order or something – to find out how I voted from the serial number, but not directly from my stub. The stubs are also evidence that a ballot has been voted in case the ballot should go missing.

    The voter-verifiability is what is essential – that you see that the ballot is exactly as you marked it when it goes in the box and would be hard to alter without leaving evidence that it has been tampered with.

    If you’re concerned about this problem and you want added credibility in discussions about election fraud, you should volunteer as a poll worker at least one election. I did and found it invaluable.

  • I almost forgot my most important point — that Racerx has it exactly right –If we don’t fix this, nothing else we do matters.

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