Diebold sez "glitch-free," just don't touch those touchscreens

We're still struggling to see how Diebold can't manage to build a simple bit of voting software that works on their own hardware in this day and age of Doom-running iPods, but it seems they've managed to screw things up again. Apparently Diebold has gotten the machines to work relatively well together, but only when using a mouse. If the touchscreen is tapped, the machine loses contact with its peers. Diebold is touting this mouse thing as a fix, and is offering to provide 5,500 mice for their e-poll books if state officials in Maryland give the go-ahead. Unfortunately, during a recent mock election, a poll-worker tapped the touchscreen despite repeated warnings to the contrary, and screwed up the system, requiring a reboot which took 30 seconds. Critics say this fault could allow some voters to vote twice, because if the machine loses contact with its fellows when the voter checks in, their voting status might not be registered. The use of the machines is still up in the air, with state elections chief Linda H. Lamone stating confusingly yesterday: "I want to wait and rather not say today what we're going to do." Diebold is still trying to fix the touchscreen problem, but we're really not holding our breath.

[Via Techdirt]

[Kamalot @ Oct 5th 2006 10:58AM]

I'll take paper ballots please. Seriously, we all know how easy it is to hack things. My love of technology has also tought me not to trust it.

[Jeremy @ Oct 5th 2006 11:03AM]

Genious!! Let's use touchscreens to vote!!....but, ummm, you cannot actually use the touchscreen, you have to use a mouse.....yeah....and if you accidentally decide to touch the touchscreen, the system goes haywire and must be restarted.....

[tekdroid @ Oct 5th 2006 11:25AM]

outsource production to China? I hear Foxconn is keen.

[Mrfreezie @ Oct 5th 2006 11:17AM]

Just get rid of those things! They don't work, and I doubt they ever will. Diebold is just trying to patch a ship that has too many holes in it.

[Bill @ Oct 5th 2006 11:33AM]

Can anyone explain to me why it is apparently so ridiculously hard to create stable, reliable, and secure voting machines? Honestly, I don't get it. Even an online shopping site like Amazon.com is infinitely more complex, and they've been running for years now. What is so difficult about creating a simple, secure kiosk that lets people choose between a limited number of candidates??

[Tom W @ Oct 5th 2006 11:47AM]

Good question Bill.

My guess would be that powerful behind-the-scenes forces DO NOT want a stable, reliable, and secure voting machine. They like the corruption just the way it is.

[Wonderboy @ Oct 5th 2006 11:37AM]

I think the bigger question is why the heck the governement is still using these machines even though nearly every week proves a new problem/security weakness.

It's like the government is saying "it's okay, if at first you don't succeed, try try again."

[scott @ Oct 5th 2006 11:45AM]

i dont like the idea of 'Tommy le' running for office, anybody that's been that close to pam anderson cant stay healthy mentally or physically...

[Eric @ Oct 5th 2006 11:46AM]

If they want to insist in using these Diebold machines but avoid using the touchscreen and only the mouse, why not "enclose" the touchscreen in clear plexiglass effectively preventing someone from "touching" the touchscreen. Or they could just use a regular PC/monitor/mouse combo and call it a day.

[Rayonic @ Oct 5th 2006 12:05PM]

Occam's razor. What's more likely, a vast national conspiracy that somehow remains secret, or simple imcompetence?

And not just Diebold's incompetence. The incompetence of the legislators who legislate electronic voting machines without setting some basic standards. Also the incompetence of county election officials who buy these machines en masse without testing them.

Do you honestly think all these screwups could pull off a huge secret conspiracy?

[Steve @ Oct 5th 2006 8:25PM]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11717105/robert_f_kennedy_jr__will_the_next_election_be_hacked

read this and you'll really be disgusted about the ineptitude and lack of security around these machines.

[bazald @ Oct 5th 2006 1:31PM]

"Occam's razor. What's more likely, a vast national conspiracy that somehow remains secret, or simple imcompetence?"

And I ask you, what is more likely, that almost all of the "mistakes" that this administration has made have been beneficial to it, or that this is a vast national conspiracy?

[SAP @ Oct 5th 2006 2:26PM]

What's more likely, a vast national conspiracy that somehow remains secret, or simple imcompetence?

You wouldn't need a huge conspiracy; just a select few in positions of oversight to move things in the right direction.

[Earlix @ Oct 8th 2006 10:27AM]

It doesn't have to be a HUGE conspiracy

and blackboxvoting.org has shown more than once that mass amounts of votes could be changed undetectably by one person. merry christmas.

and don't talk about occams razor to a philosophy major, you totally FUBARED this one.

[Bryan Brunetti @ Oct 5th 2006 12:06PM]

I don't understand how Diebold can manufacture working ATM machines yet screw up voting machines.

and another thing, how come all the ATM machines and cash registers Diebold makes provide paper reciepts but the voting machines do not?

[gene @ Oct 5th 2006 12:19PM]

To Bryan, and Bill --

The differences with ATMs are:
- money is involved;
- it's not anonymous (i.e. "secret ballot")

The problems with secure e-voting have less, IMO, to do with paper records (I think receipts are kind of a red herring) and more to do with inherent design problem in building a massive, scalable, secret and anonymous, yet verifiably reliable, voting system. Closed-source, proprietary software that centralizes counting is perhaps the worst way to achieve this, and it's predictable that, much as easy lossless digital copying makes "piracy" of music easier, this kind of setup makes vote-jacking easier -- no heavy ballot boxes to steal, stuff, hide or otherwise tamper with -- just a few engineers adding "patches" at the last minute. Centralized counting becomes a force multiplier to any hackery.

Steps toward secure, verifiable, anonymous e-voting could include:
1. requirements that voting software be open-source and spot auditable at any time;
2. decentralization of counting and public announcement of returns to as many "nodes" as possible -- the less centralized the counting, the harder it is for a single effort to undermine it.

None of this will happen, of course, until we stop letting voting machine companies give money to candidates, municipalities, etc. If there's one thing that should be completely above any outside influence, it's the creation and management of the voting process.

How many engineers out there would be willing to volunteer for an open-source voting software initiative?

[Andrew @ Oct 5th 2006 12:10PM]

The reason Diebold hasn't been ditched yet, despite the frequent screwups, is that they have deep ties within the political fabric of this country. They've been donating heavily to candidates on both sides of the isle (of course Bush is getting the most monetary attention, as if anything is new) for years now because if you can't sell a compelling product, hawk off a defective product.

That said, I've been in contact with the democratic party in MD, and for the first time in state history they are allowing absentee ballots to be cast with no stated reason for needing the absentee ballot. The democrats are trying to get all their registered voters to participate in the Vote-By-Mail system, where you actually cast a paper ballot. If you live in maryland, i would definitely implore you to use the vote by mail system, as its the only guarenteed way your ballot is being counted. They ran the mock election the article speaks of at BWI Airport yesterday, and from all i've heard, it was a nightmare all around.

And i'll say this, I'm attending college in Maryland, and Diebold runs the campus card system here (you can put money on your card to be spent within the college), and even that system is nightmarish. The machines are finicky and are often screwing up on a grand scale. If they can't be trusted to not screw up a $5 transaction, I sure as hell will never trust them with my vote.

[macstibs @ Oct 5th 2006 12:30PM]

I think its really sad and somewhat telling that even after multiple years of problems, these things are even being considered for the '06 election cycle. The irony is that it was the "Help America Vote Act" that MANDATED the use of e-voting machines.

Ya know what? QUIT HELPIN!

[Samuel Wood @ Oct 5th 2006 12:34PM]

Hah. This is probably a simple configuration issue too. Those touchscreens typically emulate a mouse attached to a COM port somehow. My bet is that they're using the same interrupt as the network card or something to that effect, and so when you touch them, the interrupt signal horks up the networking. It'd take about 2 minutes to verify this, and another 3 to reconfigure and thus actually fix it. Shipping out a mouse seems like a really, really dumb solution.

[Rick Lyon @ Oct 5th 2006 12:54PM]

If these machines worked, they wouldn't be being implemented by the current republican administration in their current attempts to steal a THIRD election! I want a paper trail! Throwing paper ballets into a huge trash bin is much harder than hitting delete!!

[some guy @ Oct 5th 2006 1:03PM]

Is there any significance that the voter in the picture has chosen Tommy Le and Adcock?

[Mark @ Oct 5th 2006 1:12PM]

What I love from the picture is that nothing says "Yes, I'd like to vote for this candidate" than a RED "X" to show my selection. C'mon, isn't it a UI standard now that we use checkmarks in checkboxes? And why would red color be used as "yes"? Typically red is associated with "no" or "negative". Dumb!

[mb @ Oct 5th 2006 2:11PM]

I think we should just vote like they did in the movie Zardoz.

[haha @ Oct 5th 2006 5:44PM]

lol
America is HILARIOUS!

[arnvid @ Oct 5th 2006 2:18PM]

I really can't comprehend how it is possible that so many things are going wrong with this electronic voting system over there. I'm from little Belgium and a majority of us have been voting electronically for the past 6 years. There were some minor problems when the system made its debute, but that's it.
The only reasons i can see for this to not work is bad will, not incompetence. Especially when you think of all the irregularities that happened with the last couple of presidential elections.

[Bill @ Oct 5th 2006 2:47PM]

> You wouldn't need a huge conspiracy; just a
> select few in positions of oversight to move
> things in the right direction.

Agreed. I mean, how hard would it be to buy off the systems architect and insert some malicious code in the firmware? You wouldn't need to have a huge conspiracy with the whole company, just those at the top.

[Rayonic @ Oct 8th 2006 12:12PM]

That's actually dodging the question, somewhat. The question is how did all these lousy voting machines get into so many polling places around the country. That act *would* involve the complicity of thousands of people at the federal, state, and local levels.

A couple people perhaps *could* alter the vote count, but the papertrail-less machines would have to be distributed far and wide first.

[T-Will @ Oct 5th 2006 3:23PM]

Just stick with paper, or a machine that spits out a paper ballot. Maybe the paper and electronic ballots could be tallied and compared, and the totals be required to be within a certain percentage of each other.

Also, we need to use Iraq's method of inking the thumb once you've voted to make it virtually impossible to vote twice.

[Miguel @ Oct 5th 2006 3:53PM]

For anyone who thinks paper ballots and vote-by-mail are any better, I invite you to take a gander at the 2004 gubernatorial elections in good ol' Washington State. That was a nightmare.

That said, I still support paper ballots because I know that even if they "accidentally" lose my ballot so that it can be "found" later for a recount, at least there's a hardcopy of my ballot to be found.

[oxfdblue @ Oct 5th 2006 5:03PM]

As much as I love hi-tech, there are somethings a simple piece of paper would be better for, voting is one of them.

The reason Diebold can't get this right, is they don't want to. Conspiracy? Well, not really. Just a little favoritism...remember the CEO of Diebold said at a Bush fundraiser in 2004..."We'll do whatever is necessary to insure a Bush victory!" And this man is making the voting machines?

Anyway, the solution is simple.

Many of you out there are probably familiar with ScanTron or other optically read forms. Why not just have people darken in the circle next to the candidate of their choice; then they feed the sheet into the machine. It reads the choices and shows on a screen who you've voted for. If all is good, you press an "accept " button and you get a receipt showing who you've voted for. At the end of the evening, the election official go to each machine to get the totals. There should be no networking needed.

The original scan sheet is kept and just in case there's a need for a recount, they are available to be looked at.

Simple and cheap.

[Harbinger @ Oct 5th 2006 4:18PM]

Eaton, Adcock, Tommy Le
Diebold with the trifecta

[Sylvain Robichaud @ Oct 5th 2006 9:29PM]

As we all know, the Repulsicans and the conservative sycophant CEO of Die-bold want you to think that this is a huge screw up. They hope and pray that this will finally and ultimately convince the Lost or Amazing Race mesmerized "Common Mouth Breathing American Red State Moron" that if we, your God Anointed Permanent leaders can't make this work then voting and this whole "democracy" thing is really not worth it and we should just keep on phone voting for more important things like American Idol, Americas' got talent etc. etc. Stockholders are you listening ? Are there no laws against a CEO's use of a companies moral capital and reputation to further the political ambitions of their chosen political affiliation and thus devaluating the said shares market worth in the event that that said CEO's miscreant is uncovered ? I just thought there were laws against such abuses. Are there Business Lawyers in the house? I Smell blood.

[Michael @ Oct 6th 2006 1:08AM]

Sorry, Diebold -- a mouse just isn't as intuitive as a touchscreen for someone who's not used to using one, and it's still a fact of life in this country that a large number of registered voters are not computer literate (or ScanTron literate, to reply to oxfdblue above). There's got to be as little as possible between the voter and the vote, and any kind of visual or mechanical abstraction of the process is simply not going to fly.