Voting machines taking heat

[Kelvin Mace]

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2003309280774

After the 2000 election turned Florida's punch-card ballots into a national punch- line, state officials spent millions of dollars on high-tech electronic voting machines.

But a growing number of critics have local officials around the country wondering whether electronic voting machines -- like the ones used in Charlotte, Sarasota and Manatee counties -- were impulse purchases they will come to regret.

Commissioners in Miami- Dade and Broward counties recently announced that they are reviewing their new systems because the machines don't give voters a paper record of their selection. Some say the paper receipt is a key ingredient to preventing voter fraud.

*snip*

Bev Harris, a Seattle-based investigative writer known as the Erin Brockovich of electronic voting, says no.

She points out that she accidentally found key information about Diebold's voter system by surfing the Internet. That information, including source codes and passwords, later was used by computer scientists at Johns Hopkins and Rice universities to expose how easily elections could be rigged under the electronic systems.

*snip*

The new computer systems are most vulnerable if they are connected to phone lines or to the Internet. Florida election officials have strict guidelines that are supposed to keep local election computers isolated from the outside world.

But most counties open up their voting machines to potential hackers when they transmit precinct results to a central computer on election night.

The systems used in Charlotte, Manatee and Sarasota transmit over phone lines.

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
1237 Elon Place
High Point, NC 27263
http://www.plan9.org

[TacticalPeek]

1. My, my. And this paper is from deep-pancake Katherine Harris country.

"That fear was seeded in the 2002 primary, when thousands of Broward and Miami-Dade voters experienced errors with their voting machines, or had their votes ignored by a computer.

Broward County Commissioner John Rodstrom said that when his wife went to the polls in 2002, she pressed the screen to vote for one candidate, and the machine showed she was voting for another. That was a common problem in Broward."


The real common problem is extremely poorly designed and implemented systems. It looks like many are starting to get that inescapable picture. Hallelujah!

[Nottingham]

2. Whoo Hoo Bev!

:bounce:

[Mari333]

3. Gads how I wish they would have mentioned DIEBOLD

and the bastards who run it, who want to assure the election go to the GOP...

[baby_bear]

4. check out this article, all about Diebold

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001744989_harris25m.html

<snip>

Thursday, September 25, 2003 - Page updated at 10:02 A.M.

Elections chief tightens vote security

By Keith Ervin
Seattle Times staff reporter

King County's newly appointed elections chief has taken steps to reduce the possibility of computerized vote-tampering while he studies questions raised about possible security flaws in software the county uses to tally election results.

Dean Logan, who became director of records, elections and licensing services this month, said yesterday he has tightened security by restricting employee access to a key election software program and removing other software from the elections computer.

Logan also said he will ask for a formal response by Diebold Election Systems to claims that the company's vote-counting systems may be vulnerable to tampering.

"We're going to take it extremely seriously because we want to be sure that voters are confident that their votes are counted and counted as they intended them to be counted," Logan said.

"If there are problems with the software, we're going to get to the bottom of that."

Logan said he decided election security was a "legitimate issue" after internal company e-mail was posted on the Internet and discussed in a Salon.com article Monday.

The memos appeared to support reports by Renton Web journalist and author Bev Harris that election results on Diebold's GEMS software could be altered by someone using its underlying Microsoft Access software without leaving a trace in the GEMS audit log.

</snip>
much more....

s_m

[obietiger]

6. Here is another mention of Diebold...

from yesterday's Akron Beacon Journal - Business section. Akron is just up the road a bit from Diebold's corporate headquarters. The headline reads:
"Report critical of Diebold system"

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/business/6874424.htm

[Pale_Rider]

5. Wireless networks should not be neglected!

County governments that use wireless networks are probably more vulnerable than wired networks since the majority of wireless devices rarely have their wireless security enabled out of the box.

The new computer systems are most vulnerable if they are connected to phone lines or to the Internet. Florida election officials have strict guidelines that are supposed to keep local election computers isolated from the outside world.

[AndyTiedye]

7. WEP isn't secure anyway

unless you use some new extensions that most vendors don't support yet.

I'll post a link to the paper if anyone needs it.

For anything important, use IPSEC or SSH to secure the data channel.