Wrong Time for an E-Vote Glitch

[JackSpratts]

Kim Zetter

It was simultaneously an uh-oh moment and an ah-ha moment.

When Sequoia Voting Systems demonstrated its new paper-trail electronic voting system for state Senate staffers in California last week, the company representative got a surprise when the paper trail failed to record votes that testers cast on the machine.

That was bad news for the voting company, whose paper-trail, touch-screen machine will be used for the first time next month in Nevada's state primary. The company advertises that its touch-screen machines provide "nothing less than 100 percent accuracy."

It was good news, however, for computer scientists and voting activists, who have long held that touch-screen machines are unreliable and vulnerable to tampering, and therefore must provide a physical paper-based audit trail of votes.

"It goes to our point that a paper trail is very much needed to (ensure) that the machine accurately reports what people press," said Susie Swatt, chief of staff for state Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), who witnessed the glitch in the Sequoia machine.

With a paper-trail system, the voting machines would print out a record when voters cast ballots on a touch- screen machine. Voters could examine, but not touch, the record before casting their ballot. The paper would then drop into a secure ballot box for use in a recount.

For nearly a year, voting companies and many election officials have resisted the call for a paper record. Election officials say that putting printers on voting machines would create problems for poll workers if the printers break down or run out of paper, and the paper records will cause long poll lines with voters taking more time to check the record.

Voting activists maintain, however, that election officials don't want the paper trail because it opens the way for recounts and lawsuits if paper records don't match digital vote tallies. And they say that paper records would provide proof the machines are not as accurate as companies claim.

Acting on public pressure for a paper trail, Sequoia became the first of the four largest voting companies to add printers to their voting machines earlier this year. Two smaller voting companies have had paper-trail machines for longer, but have had trouble selling the machines to election officials.

During the demonstration of the Sequoia machine last week, the machine worked fine when the company tested votes using an English-language ballot. But when the testers switched to a Spanish-language ballot, the paper trail showed no votes cast for two propositions.

"We did it again and the same thing happened," said Darren Chesin, a consultant to the state Senate elections and reapportionment committee. "The problem was not with the paper trail. The paper trail worked flawlessly, but it caught a mistake in the programming of the touch-screen machine itself. For some reason it would not record or display the votes on the Spanish ballot for these two ballot measures. The only reason we even caught it was because we were looking at the paper trail to verify it."

Sequoia spokesman Alfie Charles said the problem was not a programming error but a ballot-design error.

"It was our fault for not proofing the Spanish language ballot before demonstrating it," Charles said. "We had a demo ballot that we designed in a hurry that didn't include all of the files that we needed to have the machine present all of the voter's selections on the screen and the printed ballots. That would never happen in an election environment because of all the proofing that election officials do."

Charles said the machine did record the votes accurately in its memory, but failed to record them on the paper trail and on the review screen that voters examine before casting their ballot. Swatt and Chesin could not confirm this, however, because the company did not show them evidence of the digital votes stored on the machine's internal memory.

"We've been saying all along that these things are subject to glitches," Chesin said. "The bottom line is that the paper trail caught the mistake. Ergo, paper trails are a good idea."

Charles agreed the paper trail worked exactly as it was supposed to work. "If this happened in an election, the first voter would see it and could call a pollworker. They would take the machine out of service if they saw a problem," he said.

Ironically, just one week after the demonstration occurred, California took one step back from making sure voters in the state will have the reassurance that a paper trail provides.

On Thursday, a Senate bill that would require a voter-verified paper trail on all electronic voting machines in the state by January 2006 suffered a setback when the Assembly Appropriations Committee, where the bill resided, decided not to push the bill forward during this legislative session, which ends Aug. 31. This means legislators will have to reintroduce a new bill next January when they reconvene.

The bill (PDF), introduced by Johnson and state Senator Don Perata (D-Oakland), had bipartisan support and the backing of Secretary of State Kevin Shelley.

"I'm a little mystified why the committee has stalled the bill," Swatt said. "E-voting machines, like them or not, are here to stay in California. It is clear that if we are going to be living with e-voting machines the only way to protect voters and to ensure that their votes are counted accurately is to have a paper trail."

Swatt said she hoped the public would pressure the legislature to push the bill forward before the session ends.

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,64569,00.html

[tambourine-man]

Originally Posted by JackSpratts

During the demonstration of the Sequoia machine last week, the machine worked fine when the company tested votes using an English-language ballot. But when the testers switched to a Spanish-language ballot, the paper trail showed no votes cast for two propositions.

Sounds like it worked perfectly.

And the question on every politician's lips: "could it be modified for Ebonics?"

[jcat]

haha ditto, sounds like it works perfectly,

[Nicobie]

Man, I wish I could repeat other peoples words like they do here.

But I guess not, as I don't have a liberal arts degree paid for by the gov.......

shehe



First class required = cut&paste the professor's pc correct drivel.

[tambourine-man]

Originally Posted by Nicobie

Man, I wish I could repeat other peoples words like they do here.
But I guess not, as I don't have a liberal arts degree paid for by the gov.......
shehe
First class required = cut&paste the professor's pc correct drivel.

Maybe you could use your education to post three word replies and insults. Or maybe you could do that nicobie classic of quoting yourself and carrying on your own conversation? Or maybe you could put your considerable intellect into action by cluttering up a forum with inane posts and use clever words like 'ghey' and 'ass'.

Yes. Do that... Do that - and put us to shame with your remarkable originality.

[thinker]

I don't like huge c&p's either, but you need a subscription to read this, and I don't have a communal one.

Lost Votes in N.M. a Cautionary Tale
As Election Day Nears, a Look at Problems in 2000 Shows Fallibility of Machines

By Dan Keating
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A05

ESPAÑOLA, N.M. -- Four years ago, about 2,300 voters traveled the winding roads through this remote county to cast their ballots before Election Day on state-of-the-art, push-button electronic voting machines. For 678 of them, their votes were never recorded.

Vice President Al Gore won this state by 366 votes. Even if the missing votes had gone for George W. Bush and given him New Mexico's five electoral votes, it would not have changed the outcome of the presidential race.
But the missing votes in Rio Arriba County show that even in the finest electronic voting systems -- New Mexico holds itself out as a leader after a decade of experience -- serious miscounts that could sway elections can occur if the computerized machines are not correctly programmed.

But the missing votes in Rio Arriba County show that even in the finest electronic voting systems -- New Mexico holds itself out as a leader after a decade of experience -- serious miscounts that could sway elections can occur if the computerized machines are not correctly programmed.

With many states making moves to electronic voting machines this year, critics of the new technology say it is fraught with the potential for fraud. But what happened in Rio Arriba County shows what some computer experts say is a far more pressing concern: mistakes in computer programming by inexperienced local election staffs.

The Washington Post examined the voting results here because New Mexico had the narrowest winning margin in the presidential contest, and Rio Arriba County had the largest percentage of voters who had no presidential vote. The review discovered that 203 voters turned out in one of Rio Arriba's voting districts, but the state's certified results show "0" votes were recorded for Gore or Bush. The same was true for the U.S. Senate and House candidates. In another district, two-thirds of those who voted in the month before Election Day -- early voting is allowed in New Mexico -- had no votes recorded in any races. Steve Fresquez, a state computer technician who oversaw vote counts for Rio Arriba County, said the electronic machines had been programmed incorrectly for early voters, but it was not discovered until days after the election.

"It was such a mess, but there was nothing we could do about it because it was over. It was too late. The election had already gone through," Fresquez said. When it came to reporting the results, "we allowed the county to do the best they could and, as you can see, it wasn't too good."

In the months after the disputed 2000 presidential vote in Florida, which was marred by "hanging chads" and other problems with paper ballots, advocates of electronic voting machines said computerized systems would end concerns about the accuracy of ballots.

A number of states, including Maryland and Georgia, have moved to such systems, spending tens of millions of dollars.

Critics have said the machines are not perfect and are subject to deliberate tampering, but the experience in Rio Arriba County shows that simple, benign mistakes in programming can lead to results being wildly off.

Mistakes are likely to arise when thousands of small counties nationwide program ballots for multiple districts with dozens of races in each election, said Steve Ansolabehere, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is participating in the CalTech-MIT Voting Technology Project. "That is the Number 1 problem with electronic voting: the programming for each election," he said. "These offices in rural areas do not have the staff with the kind of technical expertise necessary to do electronic voting."

The need for better training of local workers and volunteers is one point on which supporters and opponents of electronic voting agree. Several states, the federal government and think tanks all say that undertrained workers are the weakest link.

"You can spend all the money you want to spend on technology and you're still not going to get better elections," said William F. Welsh, board member and former chairman of Election Systems & Software, one of the industry's biggest companies.

About 90 percent of New Mexico's voters cast their ballots electronically. Rio Arriba County sits on the state's northern border and features a mile-high valley between two plateaus, with purple mountains in the distance. It has a population of just more than 40,000 spread across an area almost half the size of Maryland. It takes 2 1/2 hours to drive from one end of the county to another -- from some pueblos, driving to a polling place requires following a road into Colorado and back.

Because of those distances, County Clerk Fred Vigil encourages voting during the month before the election on the push-button electronic voting equipment used here for a decade.

Neither Vigil nor state elections director Denise Lamb remembered problems in Rio Arriba when asked about them for The Post's review. They referred questions to Fresquez, who said he remembered the problem well.

Rio Arriba County has three voting districts -- the candidates for state legislature in each are different -- but for early voters the county used just one ballot listing the names of all the candidates.

"There was no way we could get the correct votes because that was how they programmed the machine," Fresquez said.

Fresquez said the county had only two early-voting locations. Rather than programming separate machines at each location for the county's different voting districts, Rio Arriba tried to program one machine to cover all the districts. "They were trying to use less machines," he said. "They thought they could put it all on one ballot. They were not aware of" any problem.

Still, he and Lamb said they thought the error did not mean votes were really lost. Rather, they said it was likely the votes in one or two districts were credited to the totals of another district.

That outcome does not appear to square with tallies from the county's three election districts. In one district, none of the 203 ballots cast were recorded for Bush or Gore. In another, 188 of the 569 voters cast a presidential vote. The third district had a more typical pattern, with 1,500 of the 1,594 voters recording a presidential choice.

New Mexico is the only state to have an elaborate, three-step audit process of voting results. Precinct results are checked by the county and state and then by a certified public accounting firm. The federal Election Assistance Commission, established after the 2000 Florida recount to help states establish new voting systems, has cited the audit as a "best practice" to be used elsewhere.

Lamb testified to the commission that the "triple audit" would alert the state to problems with the electronic voting machines. Fresquez's work on Rio Arriba's results did uncover the programming error. But it was never publicized.

In fact, the audit could show only that the programming error occurred. There was no way to recount the missed votes. They were simply gone.

Mistakes with new computer technology leave election officials with no recourse, said electronic voting critic Avi Ruben of Johns Hopkins University.

The outcome of a close presidential election could hinge on votes that cannot be reconstructed. "What are we going to do?" he asked. "Do we throw our hands up on a national scale and say 'We messed up'?"

[Nicobie]

Does anyone read this crap?

[miss_silver]

Originally Posted by Nicobie

Does anyone read this crap?

I do, guess you don't if you call it crap you might tho still read it and call it crap. Politic is crap anyway, it all comes down to being fucked on both sides doesn't it?

Just having fun replying to a dillweed

[Mazer]

Some of it I read, some of it I don't. But I rarely follow links so if somebody didn't cut and paste it then I'd probably never read it. I get the idea that most people here are like that, and without these stories to read we'd have nothing to talk about.

[albed]

Yeah, me too. 56k with filesharing going....I can't bother with links.

I don't bother with extra-long pastes either. If you're too lazy to edit out irrevelant stuff then just do the link and save yourself the effort.

[multi]

By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created in the Diebold central tabulator, a program installed in 1,000 locations, which controls both paper ballots and touch-screens, each system handling up to a million votes at a time. Full story

After invoking the 2-digit trigger, this second set of votes can be changed so that it no longer matches the correct set of votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set.

It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks. It is not too late to do so, and the corrective measures are relatively simple.

This program is not "stupidity" or sloppiness. It was designed and tested over a series of a dozen version adjustments, and has been in place for four years. from

hax !

Black Box Voting investigators have obtained copies of Diebold financial ledgers which show some unusual payments and receivables.

The most interesting item on the accounts payable ledger is to Georgia Lottery Services Inc., for approximately $144,000. (Will post document with exact amounts when we return from New York City).

Georgia Lottery Services appears to have nothing whatever to do with the Georgia Lottery. However, this company was listed in an article about pass-through payments (concerning payments to politicians routed through do-nothing corporations) in a 1995 investigation.

Current Georgia corporation documents show that the company was, and still is, owned by Lloyd Baccus, who also handles the medical contract for Fulton County Jails and was an NBA drug doctor.

An article in the Atlanta Constitution dated 11 Jan. 1995, Democratic chief got payment from firm with GTECH ties mentions Georgia Lottery Services, Inc. as "one of at least 16 companies in eight states that routinely receive "pass-through" payments from GTECH without performing any work, according to lawyers and witnesses. "

The article says that according to attorney Frank Haddad, "an Atlanta company, Lottery Services of Georgia, is one of several companies that receive pass-through payments without doing work.."

The article pertained to a Bowling Green, Ky. shell company that received $71,000 in brokerage fees from lottery giant GTECH Corp. which was subsequently investigated for making payoffs to Georgia Democratic Party Chairman Edgar Sims Jr.

Another interesting payment is a $2450 payment listed as a "sponsorship payment" to The Election Center, an enigmatic private company that trains elections officials. The Election Center is not a government entity, but has been perhaps the most powerful voice in America touting electronic voting systems. Diebold Elections Systems allocated $500 in June for the National Association of Secretaries of State.

Listed as a receivable is $1250 per month from the "District 8 Republican Committee," but the A.R. report does not specify which state or what the Republican Committee is paying Diebold Election Systems for.

Several large payables are designated for temporary employment agencies, and for suppliers like CardLogix and a supplier of bluetooth wireless apparatus. from

[multi]

Florida's election officials have been accused of taking a step back in electoral procedure after it emerged that they will not require recounts of votes cast on electronic voting machines, despite an administrative judge's ruling to the contrary on Friday last week.

Judge Susan Kirkland ruled that the normal state regulations apply to voting machines as well as paper ballots, Wired reports, and officials have yet to appeal the decision. The rules state that if an election is won by a margin of less than a quarter of one per cent of the total voter turnout, the votes must be retabulated.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08...evote_recount/

[multi]

Sim e-voting machine almost as buggy as real thing
If you're a Sims player you can download this "Dumboold" electronic voting machine, which has almost as many flaws as the real thing from our malfeasant friends at Diebold!

The Dumboold Voting Machine is programmed with cheats, bugs and easter eggs, which you can discover and read about by playing around with it. It demonstrates and simulates some alarming problems with real world electronic voting machines, with many surprising effects and subtle interactions:

Baxter the Chimpanzee Erases the Voting Log. When you put the voting machine into debug mode and clear the votes, you will see a dialog with the hillarious picture and story of Baxter the Chimpanzee. In your web browser, you can watch the funny monkey movie showing Baxter erasing the voting log! Now your Sims can monkey around with the electronic Dumbold Voting Machines, go bananas hacking the system, fling poo and corrupt the election results just like the pros!

from

[multi]

Low tech isn't foolproof...

...which we all knew, but didn't expect to see illustrated in this way.

Larry is currently at our polling place. They've been using a single machine and the Kerry lever (A1) just broke off. They're going to start using the backup machine.

The voter who experienced the malfunction didn't know he could ask for assistance, so he pulled the lever and exited the booth, meaning that he only cast a vote in the presidential race.

I hope this bodes well for Kerry's chances in the 4th district, that it's a question of mechanical fatigue rather than sabotage or (less sexy but more likely) age.


Update: A lawyer was called about the broken lever, and there is no remedy for the voter who exited the booth, despite the fact that he was not informed he could ask for assistance before casting his vote.

link

[multi]

With all the bad stuff getting reported, I just wanted to let you all know about my good experience today voting in my second presidential election. I live in Astoria, New York, so I guess no one's trying to mess with the election here.

I work nights and get off around 3 AM. By the time I bike home, it's about 3:30 AM, so I figured I'd just stay up, get to my polling place early and vote when the polls opened. I left the house around 5:25 AM. I was pretty tired.

I got to the polling place and was disappointed to find about 10 people out front. I wanted to be first. So I waited about ten minutes until the school janitor came and opened the doors. We all walked into the gym and I watched as the voting machines were rolled into place and various set-up activities happened.

I stood with a group of people in the front of the gym, where a lady was checking some cards. They didn't look like my card and I was worried. I waited near the end of the line and the lady got to me. I realized that these were all poll workers and said I wasn't one. So I went and waited in the lobby.

Ten more minutes passed and at 6 AM the lady let those of us waiting (about 30 now) come in to vote. I walked up to my election district machine, showed my card, had some banter with the workers and a girl behind me, they filled out my card, put it in and I was the first person to vote.

I went in and, let me tell you, I don't know what kind of setup your state has, but New York doesn't have pansy-ass touch screens, punch cards or check boxes. We've got a Big Red Lever! You pull this monster to the right. Then you flip black switches next to your choice. Then, and this is fun because you get to touch the Big Red Lever again, you flip the Big Red Lever back to the left to finish voting.

That Big Red Lever made me feel secure. My vote was entered, I said thank you to the poll workers and headed back to my home at 6:15 AM with a spring in my step and a Big Red Lever in my heart. I'm pretty tired now, but I'm going to stay up tonight and watch the returns and dream tonight of a Big Red Lever.

Vote Save Error #9

when I went down to vote for the next President of the Unites States in Santa Clara California. The screen says "Vote Save Error #9. Use the Backup Voting Procedure." A news crew was on hand to film Californians using the voting machines. I pointed to this particular screen and said "There's your story - right there. I just took a picture of the screen and plan to share it with 6.4 billion of my closest friends on the Internet tonight. I suggest you do the same." To my astonishment, the cameraman did shoot some footage of the screen, though I don't know what was shown later on television.

Now that I've told you the story behind the picture, I need not mention the maelstrom of thoughts that go through my head whenever I look at it - the picture is testament enough. The next revolution will not be televised. The next revolution will be blogged.

[floydian slip]

Gil Scott-Heron - The revolution will not be televised.

You will not be able to stay home, brother.

You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.

You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,

Skip out for beer during commercials,

Because the revolution will not be televised.



The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox

In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.

The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon

blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John

Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat

hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised.



The revolution will not be brought to you by the

Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie

Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.

The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.

The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.

The revolution will not make you look five pounds

thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.



There will be no pictures of you and Willie May

pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,

or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.

NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32

or report from 29 districts.

The revolution will not be televised.



There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down

brothers in the instant replay.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down

brothers in the instant replay.

There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being

run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.

There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy

Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and

Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving

For just the proper occasion.



Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville

Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and

women will not care if Dick finally gets down with

Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people

will be in the street looking for a brighter day.

The revolution will not be televised.



There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock

news and no pictures of hairy armed women

liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.

The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,

Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom

Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.

The revolution will not be televised.



The revolution will not be right back after a message

bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.

You will not have to worry about a dove in your

bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.

The revolution will not go better with Coke.

The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.

The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.



The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,

will not be televised, will not be televised.

The revolution will be no re-run brothers;

The revolution will be live.