Black Box Voting

Diebold KNEW about this flaw and said nothing until caught red handed.  The latest flaw - the audit logs on Diebold voting systems do not work all of the time. So in effect they are useless, because you cannot trust them.  The shame of it is that Diebold will keep doing this over and over again until states toughen up their laws, as we in North Carolina did. You see, in North Carolina, Diebold would have faced criminal and civil penalties for hiding this.

Diebold Admits Systemic Audit Log Failure; State Vows Inquiry

By Kim Zetter March 17, 2009 | 6:29:04 PMCategories: E-Voting  

SACRAMENTO, California — Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) admitted in a state hearing Tuesday that the audit logs produced by its tabulation software miss significant events, including the act of someone deleting votes on election day.

The company acknowledged that the problem exists with every version of its tabulation software.

...The GEMS software is used to tabulate votes cast on Premier/Diebold touch-screen and optical-scan machine, and is used in more than 1,400 election districts in 31 states...

But to know Diebold is to not trust Diebold anyhow. Personally I think Diebold Voting Systems is the scum of the earth, especially after Diebold tried to gut North Carolina's Public Confidence in Elections Law.  When Diebold couldn't gut our law, they packed up their little briefcases and left. 

In North Carolina we took measures to deter this dishonest, unethical and shady behavior by making it ILLEGAL. 

The real reason Diebold ran 

Friday, December 23. 2005 David Allen at BlackBoxVoting.com

Yesterday was the deadline for signing the affidavit mentioned here:

§ 163‑165.9A. Voting systems: requirements for voting systems vendors; penalties.
...
(3) The chief executive officer of the vendor shall sign a sworn affidavit that the source code and other material in escrow is the same being used in its voting systems in this State. The chief executive officer shall ensure that the statement is true on a continuing basis.
...
b) Penalties. - Willful violation of any of the duties in subsection (a) of this section is a Class G felony. Substitution of source code into an operating voting system without notification as provided by subdivision (a)(2) of this section is a Class I felony. In addition to any other applicable penalties, violations of this section are subject to a civil penalty to be assessed by the State Board of Elections in its discretion in an amount of up to one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) per violation. A civil penalty assessed under this section shall be subject to the provisions of G.S. 163‑278.34(e)."

Who do we owe for this section of the Public Confidence in Elections Law? 

David Allen of High Point and owner of this blog!

Wouldn't these be good federal standards? 

Along with this tough section of law, we also tip our hat to the many activists (and some computer scientists) around the state who lobbied their County Commissioners and county Boards of Elections as well as  attended many of the public demos for Diebold.  Very few counties were willing to purchase Diebold as a result so it just wasn't worth the hassle and the potential lawsuits for Diebold. 

I am proud to guest blog here for David from time to time when not doing other things.

The good news. San Francisco gets to use their new voting machines. Results should be fairly quick. The San Francisco Department of Elections received good news Tuesday: Secretary of State Debra Bowen approved its optical scan voting machines for ranked-choice races in next month's election.

The really really bad news. San Francisco should NOT use their new voting machines.  Results may be quicker than counting by hand, but there is reason to believe the results can't be trusted.

John Gideon, Co Director of Voters Unite delivers the bad news, (which is actually admitted in the Secretary of State's report):

http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/sequoia/system40/2008-10-14_system40_approval.pdf

The approval is only for San Francisco in November. The report also says
that a Source Code Review found that previously reported security
architecture issues remain issues in version 4.0. They also found no
effective mechanism to protect the integrity of data transferred between
components and a potential vulnerability for SQL injection attacks, and
a user can exploit a system weakness to gain access to the database
without going through WinEDS. They found several other vulnerabilities.

Item #25 on Page 8 is especially puzzling. "By order of the Secretary of
State, voting systems approved for use in California shall comply with
all applicable state and federal requirements, including, but not
limited to, those voting system requirements as set forth in the
California Elections Code and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and
those requirements incorporated by reference in the Help America Vote
Act of 2002. Further voting systems shall also comply with all state and
federal voting system guidelines, standards, regulations and requirement
that derive authority from or are promulgated pursuant to and in
furtherance of the California Elections Code and the Help American Vote
Act of 2002 or other applicable state or federal law when appropriate."

The Sequoia System 4.0 cannot be certified as meeting the above
requirements. Testing at the federal level had not even started as of
May 19. In fact they were still preparing the test plan at that time.

HAVA requires accessibility yet the state has waived that by allowing it
not to be tested. HAVA requires accuracy yet the state has ignored that
requirement by ignoring the fact that iBeta has not yet tested for
accuracy of the system.

Since May when the state of Washington began testing for provisional
certification the system version has changed from WinEDS 4.0.108 to
4.0.116 and this, again, is without a majority of testing taking place.
How many more version changes are going to be made before Nov. 4?
--
John Gideon
Co-Executive Director
VotersUnite.Org
www.votersunite.org

So, San Franciscans, still happy about those voting machines?

Recent reports of problems (serious ones) with Sequoia machines

October 3. 2008 NJ Judge Suppresses Report on Voting Machines' Security New Jersey Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberge has prohibited the scheduled release of a report on the security and accuracy of the Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machine.

October 2. 2008 Test Shows Palm Beach Voting Machines Not Accurate! Tests run yesterday in Palm Beach County Florida show there is a real problem with their voting machines.  The optical scan machines, made by Sequoia, can't count the same ballots the same way two times in a row!

September 22. 2008 New York. Sequoia's Sinking Ship - voting machines still not certified Even Sequoia's disabled accessible optical scanner is easily hacked - the old fashioned way by physical stuffing through a gap in the ballot box. On August 18, Rady Ananda showed how you could stuff the Sequoia optical scanners like a Thanksgiving turkey.

September 14. 2008 Pierce County Instant Runoff Voting System has new bug, says WA SOS - may affect San Francisco This email from the Secretary of State of Washington outlines another bug in the new IRV voting system for Pierce County. It affects "rank choice voting" (IRV/Instant Runoff) only.