Knocking the Vote:Diebold says its voting machines are bulletproof.Hack-

[Algorem]

ers say otherwise.

http://www.clevescene.com/Issues/2005-10-19/news/news.html

By James Renner

Published: Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Ion Sancho wants to get things right this time. As supervisor of elections for Leon County, Florida, he stood at the epicenter of the election fiasco of 2000. Voter confidence, he realizes, is paramount. That's why he's let a computer hacker have a go at one of his new machines.

The apparatus in question is the Accuvote 2000 Optical Scan, a boxlike computer that reads ballots as they are inserted. The data is collected and stored on a memory card that's later uploaded into a central tabulator. Diebold, the machine's Canton-based manufacturer, claims that the memory cards cannot be altered to influence votes. Sancho figured he'd find out for himself.

In May, he gave Dr. Herbert Thompson access to an Accuvote 2000. As hackers go, Thompson doesn't quite fit the mold of a pasty-faced kid playing Warcraft in Mom's basement: He's the chief strategist at Security Innovation, a Florida tester of online security for IBM, Microsoft, Google, and other large businesses and government agencies. If anyone can uncover a problem, it's this guy.

But not even Thompson could have expected this: He was able to manipulate a memory card using homemade devices. When he inserted it into the Diebold machine, 10,000 votes were awarded to one candidate, and the Accuvote detected no sign of fraud...

[McKenzie]

1. let Lophtcrack or CDC have a go

it'd take them about three seconds.

[kster]

2. kick.n.recommended.nt

[kster]

3. Explain to me again,why were those exit polls so far off ?

[OnTheOtherHand]

7. yeah, like in New York (which doesn't have Diebold)

Perspective, kster, perspective.

[kster]

10. Who do they have his brother.nt

[foo_bar]

11. my brother, the mechanical lever machine

All but two (upstate) counties in 2004, although the landscape might change by 2006:
http://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/map.php?&topic_string=5std&state=New%20York

[Bill Bored]

14. Question: Why are lever machines shown in purple on that map?

Answer: Because unlike Diebold machines, they miscount Republican and Democratic votes equally!

[kster]

16. "The New York Problem" good read

http://cse.stanford.edu/class/cs201/projects-95-96/electronic-vote-counting/NYCase.html

[foo_bar]

17. nobody's perfect

If NYC made everyone wait on long lines to punch their chad, you'd disenfranchise voters by the 6 or 7 digits. Boss Tweed notwithstanding, Florida 2000 was "paper ballots hand counted"; the paper doesn't have any magical properties after you dump it into the river.

That said, I'd prefer if lever machines were VVPB (instead of the voting equivalent of a car odometer). I'd also like it if I could cast a secure absentee ballot on the web, but politics is the art of the possible.

[kster]

18. Pretty hard to dump 4.5 million ballots in the river.nt

[emlev]

20. time to recycle my joke about election "reef-form" n/t

[OnTheOtherHand]

21. I would give that paper maybe a C

It's a rather poorly written student paper that is about nine years old. And it gives the impression that NYC was switching over to e-voting in 1995. "It was a hefty investment of $69 million for 7,000 machines." (Source: Sullivan, New York Times) Well, here's what Sullivan actually wrote, courtesy of Lexis-Nexis:

If Mayor Giuliani gave the go-ahead, New York City would use computerized machines in a Bronx assembly district in November. By 1997, according to the Board of Elections, the machines would be installed throughout the Bronx, and other boroughs would follow. Eventually, the city is expected to buy 7,000 computerized machines. The price tag for the entire project is $59 million.

Did this happen? Well, no. NYC still votes on lever machines. Here is a fun story about it:
http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/election/2004/voting_fanelli01.asp

If you are a glutton for punishment, you can plow through the NYC pollworker's manual to learn about operating procedures:
http://vote.nyc.ny.us/pdf/documents/boe/pollworkers/pollworkersmanual.pdf

So far the Verified Voting map seems pretty accurate, although there are some ambiguities in its coverage:
http://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/

(EDIT: By the way, the point of the original post was that op-scan tabulators can be hacked, which is true and important. That's why we need random audits.)

[kster]

22. kick.nt

[punpirate]

4. Diebold has always thought that software/hardware deficiencies...

... can be overcome by better marketing and campaign contributions in the right places.

The simple truth is that every security measure has a counter-measure. Very often, the counter-measure is simpler and cheaper. That's true of electronic security, codes, missile defense... and voting machines. If you can figure out the nature of the security measure, it can be beat.

[glitch]

5. Even if true, only one of the issues, since they are our primary suspect.

The enemy is within Diebold. We don't trust their security or their code.

[texpatriot2004]

6. Live FREE or Diebold. Diebold LIES. Recommended. nm

[tavalon]

8. What they meant to say

was that only their bullets get through. I'm not at all sure about that claim either but neither would that cause me to sleep well.

[IndyOp]

9. Incredible - more! more! more!

Maybe people won't believe how hackable these machines are until a computer-savy family member gets one to try and hack -- and is able to hack on their first try, and their second, and their third.

:grr:

[onthebench]

12. Diebold people are told to answer always in the positive

No matter what the news is they will always say the opposite positive response. When the famous Hopkins report was released, they said "see our system is completely secure". This goes back to their days as Global Elections under Van Pelt. He was a used car salesman type extroadinaire.

"So the car has a flat tire...you still have 75% tire coverage and for a 2000 year model that is more than average"

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

13. Diebold's machines being...

...hack proof (unlikely) or not is beside the point. They collect and tabulate the votes without independent accuracy verification at the precinct (collection) level, and no redundancy checks by an independent body at the tabulation level. We simply have to take their word for everything. If someone had told me ten years ago that our electoral process would evolve into this, I would've thought they were nuts, and promptly informed them that the American people would NEVER stand for it. This is a nightmare come true and unless we stop it, it will mean the end of our republic as we know it. Welcome to the Korporate Republik of Amerika.

[Carolab]

15. Great to see this getting more coverage. Especially in Ohio! n/t

[kster]

19. Call TIA we may have found 10,000 more RBR's...nt