E-Voting Problems

I had talked earlier about Election Fraud and how easy it could be using the new e-voting machines that everyone wants to use nowadays. Well it appears that there are plenty of e-voting problems according to this post on Techdirt, Would You Believe It? Widespread Reports Of E-Voting Problems.

What a surprise that after plenty of people have pointed out for years why e-voting machines are problematic that there appear to be numerous reports of problems with the machines. There’s nothing too surprising: reports of machines not working right, selecting the wrong candidate or poll workers not knowing how the machines worked at all. Everywhere you look there are more and more and more reports of problems. While elections officials everywhere are trying to claim it’s no big deal, it should be a huge deal.

And check out the big list of voting problems from ABCnews,

A Republican source said that while party officials still felt that things were going relatively smoothly, they were concerned about the possibility that Michigan senate candidate Mike Bouchard’s Web site was hacked, and machines had been tampered with in New Jersey. Party officials were also concerned that they ran out of ballots in a heavily Republican county in New Mexico, but in balance, they were comfortable with the process of the election.

Ohio is the No. 1 state getting called about at nationwide hotline centers run by Election Protection — a consortium led by People for the American Way, the NAACP, and the Lawyer Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law. According to calls at the Election Protection hotline in Ohio, there were large problems in the district of East Cleveland (Cuyahoga County) — all the machines at one precinct crashed and they did not hand out paper ballots.

In New Jersey — home of a key and close Senate race between Democrat Bob Menendez and Republican Tom Kean Jr. — Republicans are upset about reports that machines are malfunctioning. The reports say Menendez is pre-selected on machines when voters try to use them. Voters tried to cast their ballot for Tom Kean but couldn’t. It was unknown if it was caused by glitches or something malicious.

In Pennsylvania, Poll hours have been extended to 9 p.m. to compensate for machine malfunctions. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law plans to file a lawsuit about delays and problems at the polls due to machine malfunctions. They want Lawrence County voting hours extended to compensate for machine malfunctions. Source: ABC News

Sounds like lots of problems are happening and I just quoted a few of them. Although they are still happy that everything is going smoothly. But that is part of the problem today, as long as its not too many people having trouble, they will call it a successful election, but if anyone has a problem voting, if you ask me, that is a problem. Voting is a right and everyone’s vote should count.

More coverage from Techdirt on e-voting, http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061106/231708.shtml” target=”_blank”>What The Maryland Study On Diebold Voting Machines Didn’t Tell You where a 200 page report on the Diebold voting machines was knocked down to 38 pages, by none other that, you guessed it, Diebold. How many industries get to do that?

The Electronic Voting Movie Diebold Didn’t Want You To See… Even If They Hadn’t Seen It Where Techdirt talks about the movie Diebold doesn’t want you to see, see it here Hacking Democracy on Google Video.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: E-voting, Election Fraud, Politics No Comments » November 2006

CNN Video Demonstrates Voting Machine Virus

Nice video from CNN with one of the professors who tested the Diebold e-voting machines, demonstrating hacking the e-voting machines with a virus. It also talks about people suing to have these machines removed and not used.

I think the government should tell these companies that we need some kind of paper trail, these machines could easily print out who they just voted for in each election, the voter could make sure they are correct and then drop it in a box, for verification purposes should there be some kind of problem.

Simple.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Election Fraud, Politics No Comments » September 2006

Should We Stick with Manual Voting Machines?

The longer you are around technology, the easier it becomes to use, the more it becomes ingrained in your lives, that it’s often impossible to imagine there being a better way. But with the recent report on Diebold Election Systems AccuVote-TS voting machines, I have to wonder, isn’t the best way still the old fashioned way? I know e-voting machines will make the pollsters work easier, but will it make them feel better about the outcome? If it is that easy to hack a voting machine, infect it with a virus that spreads by their memory cards and change the outcome, then what are we really saving? And, to take a conspiracy theory to the edge, how hard would it be for an employee to infect each voting machine as it is created, to make sure their party wins.

Recently, Diebold responded to the report in a PDF, and said, basically that the machines they tested were old and had outdated software, that the machines would not be tied to a network to spread the virus and called the report unrealistic and inaccurate, essentially attacking the reviewers trying to deflect the criticism. Well, Ed Felten posted their response to Diebold.

We studied the most recent software version available to us. The version we studied has been used in national elections, and Diebold claimed at the time that it was perfectly secure and could not possibly be subject to the kinds of malicious code injection attacks that our paper and video demonstrate. In short, Diebold made the same kinds of claims about this version — claims that turned out to be wrong — that they are now making about their more recent versions.

We demonstrated these problems on our video, and again in live demos on Fox News and CNN. Common sense says to believe your eyes, not unsubstantiated claims that a technology is secure.

Our paper discusses physical security, election procedures, security tape, and numbered security seals. See, for example, Sections 3.3 and 5.2 of our paper. These sections and others explain why these measures do not prevent the attacks we describe. And once again, Diebold does not assert that they would.

Secure voting equipment and adequate testing would assure accurate voting — if we had them. To our knowledge, every independent third party analysis of the AccuVote-TS has found serious problems, including the Hopkins/Rice report, the SAIC report, the RABA report, the Compuware report, and now our report. Diebold ignores all of these results, and still tries to prevent third-party studies of its system.

If Diebold really believes its latest systems are secure, it should allow third parties like us to evaluate them.

Sounds like a challenge Diebold, are you going to step up to the plate and let them review your secure machine, or are voters like myself just supposed to believe the hype and ignore reports such as this? If you really want to discount what they did, let them test it and have your people watch, it’s win-win for everybody, unless you are afraid of what they will find.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Current Events, Election Fraud, Politics, Technology No Comments » September 2006

How Hard is Election Fraud?

Just reading about the new Diebold e-voting machines and how little security seems to have been a consideration, as there has been multiple reports on how easy it is to hack into. From USA Today,

A Princeton University computer science professor added new fuel Wednesday to claims that electronic voting machines used across much of the country are vulnerable to hacking that could alter vote totals or disable machines.

In a paper posted on the university’s website, Edward Felten and two graduate students described how they had tested a Diebold AccuVote-TS machine they obtained, found ways to quickly upload malicious programs and even developed a computer virus able to spread such programs between machines.

The marketing director for the machine’s maker — Diebold Inc.’s Diebold Election Systems of Allen, Texas — blasted the report, saying Felten ignored newer software and security measures that prevent such hacking.

Of course he is going to say that, he’s not going to admit one of his cash cows are not secure, and he has to get the uncertainty and doubt going on whether these tests were accurate or not.

Felten and graduate students Ariel Feldman and Alex Halderman found that malicious programs could be placed on the Diebold by accessing the memory card slot and power button, both behind a locked door on the side of the machine. One member of the group was able to pick the lock in 10 seconds, and software could be installed in less than a minute, according to the report.

The researchers say they designed software capable of modifying all records, audit logs and counters kept by the voting machine, ensuring that a careful forensic examination would find nothing wrong.

So, it sounds like it would be very easy to break into early in the voting process to make sure everything went “their” way. Election fraud is not new, it has been going on for years, but to what extent? Lots of people believe we had fraud in the presidential election when Gore lost Florida, and we’ve all heard the stories of people buying votes, dead people “voting” and people voting multiple times, but a commenter on Techdirt relayed just how easy it used to be to commit election fraud.

I used to prepare the old lever type voting machines for our local elections and talk about insecure! All I had to do while I was in the back of the machine is turn the counting wheel to start say at 1000 instead of 0 and this took no technical training or electronic hacking. At least the new electronic machines take technological savvy to pull off election fraud. The old machines could be rigged by a monkey. I just think a lot of this is fear of technology which always happens with anything new. I am in no way letting Diebold off the hook here. They should tighten up the security on these boxes but it always has been easy to pull off an election fraud.

Sounds like lots of testing needs to be done, as well as hiring people you think are trustworthy to man the polls. Election fraud will always be around because the positions are so important, so it’s crucial to start with good personel as well as secure equipment.

Added: After reading the rest of the comments, this commenter added something he read from the report,

The machine we obtained came loaded with version 4.3.15 of the Diebold BallotStation software that runs the machine during an election.1 This version was deployed in 2002 and certified by the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) [11]. While some of the problems we identify in this report may have been remedied in subsequent software releases (current versions are in the 4.6 series), others are architectural in nature and cannot easily be repaired by software changes. In any case, subsequent versions of the software should be assumed insecure until fully independent examination proves otherwise.

Posted by Jimmy Daniels Posted in: Election Fraud, Politics, Security 3 Comments » September 2006