My article on San Diego voting machine problems & Jim March arrest

[Liberty Belle]

Below is an article of mine on problems with San Diego's voting machines which ran in the East County Californian today (7/28/05). Also included is a breaking news alert on the arrest of Jim March from Black Box Voting. More to come in Part II, running next week. You may freely distribute this article as long as you credit the East County Californian and include my byline and copyright.

VOTING MACHINES VULNERABLE TO HACKING: DIEBOLD EQUIPMENT IS VULNERABLE TO FRAUD, SECURITY EXPERTS WARN

By Miriam Raftery

The East County Californian

July 28, 2005


When you cast your ballot in the next election, will your vote be counted accurately?

Election reform experts cast doubt on the answer to that question, raising serious concerns about the accuracy and trustworthiness of electronic voting machines and central tabulators used to count votes — including the Diebold system used in San Diego County.

“There is ample proof reported from voting experiences across the country and in California that Diebold, ES&S and other electronic machines for recording and counting votes are susceptible to fraudulent manipulation, have created voting errors and have failed to operate properly at the polls,” said Brina-Rae Schuchman, chair of the Election Integrity Committee at San Diego for Democracy/DFA (Democracy For America). “In March 2004, the San Diego Registrar of Voters presided over what became one of the worst elections in the 200 year history of our country. Many, many thousands of San Diego voters were disenfranchised.”

She added, “Former Secretary of State Shelley’s office had found that Diebold was installing federally and state uncertified voting machines, optical scanners and software in California counties, including San Diego. Over 30 percent of Diebold machines in San Diego County in March 2004, were found to be non-starters.” Diebold personnel had access to machines during the election, allowing potential vote manipulation, she added.

That election used Diebold touch screen machines, which produced no paper trail and no way to verify results. Those machines have since been decertified by the state.

San Diego County then purchased Diebold optical scanners to scan ballots at polling places. Each scanner contains a memory card, which is later taken to the Registrar of Voters office, where votes are counted on a Diebold GEMS central tabulating computer.

But serious concerns have been raised over both the optical scanners and GEMS central tabulators. “These machines, including the Diebold GEMS optical scanners in San Diego County, must all be rejected for vote counting in California because they can’t be trusted,” Schuchman said.

On July 4, Black Box Voting, Inc. (BBV), a nonpartisan consumer protection group for elections, issued a critical security alert for Diebold optical scan systems, including the version used in San Diego.

BBV security experts proved that Diebold optical scan voting machines and a Diebold central tabulator were vulnerable to manipulation of votes in Leon County, Fla. “Dr. Herbert Thompson penetrated the GEMS central tabulator. It took less than a minute,” said Bev Harris of BBV. In addition, computer expert Harri Hursti of Finland penetrated the voting machines to alter votes.

BBV experts demonstrated that votes could be changed on an individual voting machine, in groups of voting machines, or in mass through the central tabulating computer itself. Thompson penetrated the central tabulator through use of a Trojan horse program that utilized Windows vulnerability. Hursti concluded that the Diebold optical scan systems include “the mother of all security holes.” By manipulating memory cards, “Hursti was able to take just one memory card from one voting machine in a precinct and infect the whole system,” Harris revealed, warning that San Diego’s system could be similarly vulnerable.

San Diego County’s new Registrar of Voters, Mikal Haas, insisted that San Diego elections are secure. “There are password protections. There are physical protections. There are electronic protections. It is as secure as we can make it,” he said of the central tabulator, but declined to reveal whether any security measures beyond those required by the state have been implemented. “If I told you, they wouldn’t be very secure,” he replied. Haas noted that in Leon County, Fla., BBV experts were given the same access to machines as election officials and that no external hacking occurred.

But Harris counters that while no external hack was attempted in Leon County, systems are still vulnerable to hacking from outside as well as inside tampering.

In San Diego, poll workers are allowed to keep voting machines overnight at their homes. . Asked about security concerns, Haas replied that voting machines and memory cards are sealed and tamper-resistant.

But Harris disputed that notion. According to Harris the seals used by the optical scanners have seals that can be removed and reinstalled with pliers.

Harris believes that security measures should also be implemented to protect against vote manipulation by an insider within a Registrar’s office. “A bank does not tell you that you don’t need security procedures because we trust our people,” she noted, adding that banks use security videos and require at least two people to access vaults.

Computer expert Bruce Sims of San Diego agrees that San Diego’s voting system is inherently flawed. “The supervisory program running on the card should never be there. The card should simply take data and have data taken from it. It shouldn’t execute any sort of program,” he observed. “It’s a poor design, or if you want to be into conspiracies and think back to what the head of Diebold said about the state of Ohio, it’s actually designed in a way to facilitate vote corruption.”

Diebold CEO Walden O’Dell promised at a GOP fund-raiser to deliver Ohio’s electoral votes to George W. Bush. Diebold has reportedly installed illegal backdoor software and hired convicted felons to write computer codes, including one senior programmer convicted of 23 counts of felony theft, further raising doubts about the company’s impartiality.

Registrar Haas has thus far refused requests from BBV to inspect election equipment and records to determine whether or not indications of improprieties exist. State law does not require such access by independent citizens’ groups, he pointed out. But Harris countered that the law does not prohibit such access, either.

“It would be our contention that the memory card, the ballot box, should be considered a public record,” she said. “So the original should be maintained and anyone from the public should be able to examine it.”

Sims wrote letters to San Diego’s Registrar seeking to halt the mayoral special election over concerns about voting security. “I’ve also contacted every county supervisor, and not one has responded,” added Sims, a registered independent who recently filed a complaint with the San Diego County grand jury over Diebold’s system. “Any citizen, no matter what party they belong to, should be concerned about the integrity of their vote.”

Supervisor Dianne Jacob noted that the Registrar of Voters has an obligation to conduct elections with machines certified by the secretary of state (SOS), and that San Diego’s current system meets state requirements. “In the last election it worked just fine, for all intents and purposes,” she said, but added, “My preference would be to use touch screen machines. Those would be the safest and the highest level of guarantee of security. Unfortunately, the SOS has not certified the touch screens, but that is the future and that is what we should be having here in S.D. in 2006.”

The fall 2005 election will likely be conducted on optical scanners. But in 2006, new laws requiring paper trails take effect. Haas confirms that Diebold touch screen machines will be retrofitted to produce paper trails, if certified by the secretary of state.

But some argue that touch screens are unreliable and that proposed protections do not go far enough. Long rolls of cash register-type receipts with small print on flimsy paper could make recounts difficult, Harris said.

Election reform activists differ on the best solution. Complicating matters are requirements to provide access for disabled voters and those speaking foreign languages.

Ed Kennedy of Open Voting Consortium argues for machines that produce actual paper ballots, with open-source software to be developed by the University of California. “It’s going to take a sustained effort to get clean elections,” he concluded. “This is fundamental to a democracy.”

Others seek to eliminate electronic voting machines altogether, except for disabled voters. “What is required are paper ballots that can be hand counted, audited and recounted if required,” Schuchman said, noting that hand counting is done successfully in Canada, Israel, India and the United Kingdom. “Sustaining our democracy demands action,” she concluded, urging concerned citizens to contact San Diego’s Registrar of Voters, the county Board of Supervisors, and California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson. “Ask them for hand-counted paper ballots to be used by all voters in California for every election henceforth.”

Next week: Part II in this series will examine state and federal election reform efforts.


BREAKING NEWS:

During Tuesday’s mayoral election Jim March, a member of the BBV board of directors was arrested for trying to observe the Diebold central tabulator as the votes were being counted.

“We will let people observe it (the central tabulator)— the screen is facing the window in a computer room and anyone is free to observe it,” said Mikal Haas, San Diego County’s new Registrar of Voters, in an interview with The East County Californian before Tuesday’s election.

According to a Black Box Voting press release, “the Diebold computer was positioned too far away for citizens to read the screen. Citizens could not watch error messages, or even perceive significant anomalies or malfunctions. Unable to see the screen, March went into the office where the tabulator was housed. Two deputies followed him and escorted him out.” He is being charged with a felony, ‘interfering with an election official,’ according to Jim Hamilton’s statement on the same press release. Hamilton is an elections integrity advocate from San Diego.

“What Jim March wanted to do was to clearly demonstrate that the citizens cannot watch their own election,” Bev Harris, member of BBV said.

She also expressed serious concerns about the validity of the results of the election. “What struck me was that the result was almost exactly the same in every single return. Usually it fluctuates up and down wildly; it’s almost like there was a set point. Noting that the percentages did not change substantially for any candidate as precincts came in, even from early returns with just 1 percent. “That’s very fishy,” she added.

[The Doctor.]

1. It's so depressing...

I've been trying to wake people up.

But they don't want to know, they don't want to be confronted with the reality of losing their Democracy... so they do nothing while they pretend all is well.

I'm getting VERY sick of it.

[Liberty Belle]

4. I'm telling everyone I interview nationwide about this story.

I write for a national business publication. Today I've been apologizing to interviewees for being a bit less prepared than possible, explaining that I'm involved in a very important nationally breaking story here in San Diego.

They are shocked to hear the details about voting machine security issues and the systematic suppression of voting reform efforts, and I'm thrilled to be educating these folks all over the country about the issues. I've been referring them to the Conyers report, etc, and urging them to tell everyone they know about what's happening to our democracy.

[Peace Patriot]

2. See Jim March's great account of getting arrested July 26 in San Diego

for trying to view the computer tabulation machines during the mayor's election.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x386047

And recommend both of these posts!

[Liberty Belle]

3. Thanks! We're getting more media coverage, too.

It's so important to spread the word about this.

Fortunately, our local media has given coverage to Jim's arrest. At least 2 local TV stations aired footage, plus Jim was slated to be on Stacy Taylor's radio show this a.m. (I missed the program, so can't confirm that it actually aired.) On the downside, the Union-Tribune whitewashed the story, describing a voting rights activist who "forced his way" into the room where votes were being counted and got arrested.

I've received private e-mails from local election reform advocates citing specific election codes that were violated by the Registrar and his staff, which raises the possibility of a lawsuit filed by Jim March and BBV, and/or a challenge to the election results.

Stay tuned for more exciting installments in the San Diego mayoral sopa opera.

[MindPilot]

5. Jim March was on Stacy Taylor thins morning

He sounded quite reasonable. His side is that he didn't break any law, but they've charged him with felony interfering with an election (or something like that--I'm doing this from memory) and he's out on a $10,000 bond. Of course they added resisting arrest too.

[Liberty Belle]

6. Resisting arrest? Surprising, given that he reportedly said

"I'm not resisting" and went willingly enough.

This stinks of a set-up.

More interesting news: Grand Jurors were present to observe the vote counting. Shortly before the election, a local activist and computer expert asked the San Diego Grand Jury to look into Diebold voting equipment here. It appears that a Grand Jury investigation has been launched. Is that a new means of attaining justice with regard to Diebold and the officials who ignore security warnings or worse, conspire to make election rigging easy to accomplish?

[Nikki Stone 1]

7. 3rd recommendation: This is a crucial article

Please keep us posted about both the voting machines and the ridiculous arrest of Jim March.

Is Bev Harris indicating that a run-off was the desired outcome?

[Liberty Belle]

8. Bev was surprised to learn it would be a run-off.

She actually wasn't aware until after the election that a simple plurality wouldn't mean victory.

Clearly a win of 50% or more was the desired outcome for Fry. If the election was fixed, the fixers must've realized that an outright win for anyone but Fry would be viewed with suspicion, since Fry was far ahead in every poll. So they would have opted to have her "win", but not by a high enough margin to avoid the run-off against a Republican.

[cascadiance]

9. And of course the most likely to beat Frye opponent would be Sanders...

It was the most optimal (yet believable) outcome for the Republicans. And of course, even if it is a close election in November, it will be "believable" if it comes out either way, so they can do there work again to doctor it against Frye then if need be.

[Oerdin]

10. There is nothing wrong with those machines.

I voted in San Diego the other day and there is nothing wrong with those machines. Each oveter gets a reciept plus there is an old fashioned paper ballot so recounts can always be done if there is something wrong with the electronic tally. Additionally all voters get to see that their vote got counted before they leave thus if there is a technical problem (think 2000 & hanging chads) the voter knows about it before s/he leaves giving him/her a chance to correct it.

[cascadiance]

11. The vultnerability has been shown to be on the central tabulator machine..

That is the machine that Jim March was trying to see. The city could have saved us all a LOT of grief if they'd been flexible and moved the machine or added monitors to allow the witnesses to see what was going on on this machine that mostly was the worry of people for this election. They didn't, someone got arrested rather controversially trying to see it, and that's why we have the controversy we do now.

[Liberty Belle]

13. Bingo, plus the tabulator was hooked up to the Internet!

Protected only by a firewall put in by SAIC.

Hooking the GEMS central tabulator up to the Internet violates Diebold's own manual and may have rendered the entire election illegal, I'm told.

[Oerdin]

15. What you are ignoring.

Is that paper ballots also exist. If the electronic vote gets tampered with then the paper ballots can be counted the old fashioned way.

[Liberty Belle]

18. Yeah, if you have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on a recount,

and can get the county to agree to hold one, both big obstacles.
In Donna Frye's case, she's already drained her financial resources fighting the "unbubbled ballots" cause through lower and appellate courts. So in practice, the presence of the paper ballots with these machines really only helps wealthy candidates.

[Oerdin]

14. I'm a democrat

And there was nothing contriversional about that arrest. That ass hole was repeatedly warned he had to observe from behind the window and that only election officials could actually touch, hold, or get close to the ballots. That idiot ignored repeated police warnings and forced his way into a restricted area which could have raised Republicans into claiming votes had been tampered with. It is highly desirable to observe but it is stupid to think you are above the law. That guy deserved to be arrested.

[cascadiance]

16. There's different accounts of what happened...

Were you there and witnessed what happened, or are you repeating what someone else said?

I think there are two sides of each story.

Was the Central Tabulator machine too far away to see what was going on it?

If so, did officials really refuse what sounded like a reasonable and doable request of locating it closer so that others could see what was going on on it?

If officials had done so, and everyone there could see what was going on, there'd be no issue and no story. As it is, though I have no reason to believe that something WAS wrong, what was represented as the attitude of election officials to the one place of security concern and their lack of ability or will to remove any controversy and show that they had nothing to hide is still disturbing, no matter how much Jim March may have "acted up".

Jim March may have gone beyond the boundaries of what was right, but just because he did so doesn't mean that there wasn't something wrong going on there, just like the documents in Rathergate may have been forgeries doesn't implictly mean that what they were talking about wasn't true either. In both cases there are two separate events/set of concerns to be worried about.

I'm still concerned that this election wasn't done completely above board, and there should have been a means to easily make it clear that it was above board which, according to some, wasn't followed, and therefore I'm still concerned. Had Jim March not done what he did, we probably never would have heard what happened, and the press still tried to make it sound like "nothing happened" anyway, even with his arrest. Something still appears to stink to me.

[Liberty Belle]

12. A recount would cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Most candidates can't afford that, even if they suspect something is amiss. Your paper ballot is read by a Diebold scanner with programmable memory card that could be tampered with, plus further hacking/tampering is possible at the GEMS central tabulator.

Turns out the central tabulator was hooked up to the Internet, a violation of Diebold's own manual. I've had at least one expert tell me that means the election was conducted illegally.

These votes are far from secure.

[cascadiance]

17. Ohio showed ways of abusing recounts of these ballots...

Even though state law required that Ohio pick RANDOM precincts to do hand recounts of their non-touch screen ballots, the election board made a point of selecting certain precincts that they chose, not which were random.

Subsequently, some election observers reported that in spot checks of ballots in other precincts (that the board perhaps *didn't* want to be randomly selected), there were ballots that had holes or bubbles filled in for Kerry that were whited out or had tape put over the holes and a mark or hole for Bush instead. They were marked as "corrected", but who's to say how many of them were in those precincts, especially if no hand recount was done of them *selectively*.

There's many ways to work around the system in ways that are *likely* to not be found, and when you have election officials doing things like the following, these methods can be covered up:

1) Preventing effective monitoring of central tabulator machines, which could have easily been done in this case.
2) Had the central tabulator machine hooked up to the internet, which was against the rules, which had been done in this case.
3) Allowing precinct officials to take voting machine equipment home with them, subjecting them to possible tampering, which was the case earlier in San Diego, and is alleged to have happened in this case too.
4) Had congress and other Republican bodies approve electronic voting systems without paper trails.
5) Some election boards not abiding by laws to do truely random hand recounts.
6) Many *coincidental* cases of undersupply of voting machines, or increased "breakage" of these machines, in heavily Democratic districts.
7) Allow voting machine companies to regard their code and operations of their software as "proprietary" instead of being open for review.
8) Early precinct destruction of ballots before the legal processes are allowed to finish that would allow for recounts.
9) Leaving locations where ballots have been kept unlocked overnight, often times the same precincts where the previous day, the press wasn't allowed to come in and cover officials reviewing those ballots.

There have been so many cases where situations like the above could have easily have been avoided, and legally SHOULD have been avoided, where though it might not directly indicated abuse, that allowing them to happen unchecked, allows for other unchecked abuse to happen.

I would accept a truely random and adequately sized hand recount of this mayoral election's ballots as a way to keep costs down (that would be involved in a total recount) but also be a way to prevent or minimize what might have been abuse here. If there are no "altered" or otherwise questionable ballots, and the counts of these ballots match what are in the central tabulator, with no ability to select which precincts to scrutinize, I'd accept this election as being fair then. Right now there's questions, which I still don't like not being answered.

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. So that is why they got so nervous when I raised these isue

at the polls...

Thanks for the connection... GEMS they got very defensive