ElectronicVoting
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DC election website hacked, John Philip Sousa pleased
Unlike the secrecy that usually surrounds e-voting efforts, the folks at the Washington D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics had a novel approach: Why not invite hacksters of all stripes and temperaments to bust into the new online system being tested for overseas and military voters? Of course, it was only a matter of time before a security hole was discovered -- and now we know that the University of Michigan fight song is called The Victors. It seems that a certain college professor unleashed his students on the site, at which point they quickly sniffed a way in and left an MP3 of the tune ("the greatest college fight song ever written," according to John Philip Sousa) as their calling card. The board has made the source code and server info available (the better to test its mettle) and we must say, it's certainly good to see public officials paying more than lip service to security -- especially where electronic voting is concerned. The site was down over the weekend, and is back up now, but with one crucial difference: ballots will have to be mailed, faxed, or e-mailed in.
Premier Elections Solutions pays up in Ohio Diebold suit, offers more faulty voting machines for free
Man, this is rich. Some two years after being sued by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Premier Elections Solutions (formerly, and more infamously known as Diebold) has decided to settle up. Way back when, Brunner alleged that the outfit's touch-screen voting machines weren't acting as they should, and she pointed to an investigation that proved at least 11 counties were dropped in past elections when their memory cards were uploaded to servers. As of now, Premiere -- which is owned by Election Systems & Software -- has agreed to pony up just over $470,000 to the 47 counties that touched its e-voting hardware, but that's hardly the kicker. Counties are also eligible for up to $2.4 million in free Premiere software for two years, and the company's even throwing in up to 2,909 free voting machines along with a 50 percent coupon for maintenance fees. Right, because the Buckeye State is so anxious to start using the machines it found so faulty to begin with. Makes total sense. Update: We've learned from someone inside of Ohio elections that 11 counties experienced a failed upload of results from a memory card during the unofficial canvas (election night), but those results were recovered during the official canvas several days later. The statewide results included all counties. And know you know.
Hang your head, Sequoia e-voting machine; you've been hacked again
Oh, Princeton University, won't you leave the poor electronic voting machines alone? Haven't they suffered enough without you forming teams with researchers from the University of California, San Diego and the University of Michigan to spread their private moments even further asunder? That group of brainiacs came together to devise a new, even easier hack that allows someone with no special access to take complete control of a Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machine -- an example of which the team purchased legally at a government auction. The machine does not allow modifications to its ROM (because it has an O in the middle), but the team was able to use a technique called return-oriented programming to modify how the machine executes existing code, taking the bits they want and, ultimately, devising a way to re-program its behavior by simply inserting a cartridge into a slot -- presumably after blowing on it for good luck. The hack only works until the machine is powered off, but the attack even foils that, intercepting the switch signal and making the system only appear to power down. Today's top tip for electronic voting polling stations: unplug your boxes overnight. [Via Digg]
Unloved e-voting machines cluttering warehouses, losing value fast
Just as the world's landfills could soon see an influx of unwanted televisions, many American warehouses are packed with e-voting machines that once held promise for a better way to vote. Instead, they turned into a multi-year fiasco, with hackers figuring out how to do everything save for their income taxes on 'em and states reverting back to less vulnerable methods. Now, many states are scrambling for ways to recoup costs, even for outlets that will take them in for recycling. Oddly, Ohio cannot ditch the systems it purchased until a couple of related lawsuits get dealt with. The result? Buckeyes will probably still be using e-voting machines come November.[Via Slashdot, image courtesy of BradBlog]
Former Polish prime minister opposes online voting, says Internet users are all watching porn
Sure, electronic voting has had its fair share of troubles, but there's no denying that it's the wave of the future -- and we're always intrigued by plans like the one being floated in Poland right now that would allow citizens to vote online from their homes, since that seems like a great way to increase participation. Of course, some people are just never going to get it, and it looks like former Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski is the latest Luddite curmudgeon to risk your ire, saying that he's not exactly thrilled with the idea of a "young person sitting in front of a computer, watching video clips and pornography while sipping a bottle of beer and voting when he feels like it." Kaczynski went on to say that as a whole, Internet users are "the easiest group to manipulate, to suggest who to vote for" -- which probably means that in addition to not using a cell phone or having a bank account (true!), he's never actually been on the Internet either. Tell you what, Minister: you come in here and successfully manipulate a Mac vs. PC flamewar, maybe we'll talk. Deal?
Ohio report recommends scrapping electronic voting
Like California and Florida before it, habitual swing state Ohio has just issued a report slamming its three providers of electronic voting equipment -- including, of course, renamed Diebold -- and recommending that the 50 counties which use them scrap the machines in favor of a paper-trail-leaving optical scanning method. The report, commissioned by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, details the ways in which white hat hackers were able to infiltrate the systems, easily picking locks, using portable devices to manipulate vote counts, and even introducing "malignant software" into boards of election servers. Brunner's plan calls for the entire state's voting infrastructure to be overhauled by next year's presidential elections, a move likely to be lauded by touchscreen voting's many critics, but coming "about eight years too late, jerks -- thanks a lot," according to usually-even-tempered former candidate Al Gore.
US bars Ciber from testing e-voting terminals due to negligence
Call us crazy, but we had a sneaking suspicion all along that all these e-voting woes were due to a lack in quality control testing somewhere along the approval line, and now it seems the US government has found its scapegoat. Ciber, Inc., the Colorado-based company responsible for testing a majority of the nation's electronic voting terminals, "has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its QC procedures, and moreover, could not document that it was conducting all the required tests." Aside from wondering where the oh-so-critical auditors were during this entire debacle (read: federal scrutiny of the testing began just recently), this brings into question the legitimacy of the votes that were actually placed and counted through the potentially faulty machines, but alas, what's done is (presumably) done. Eager to keep that expectedly gigantic government contract money pouring in, Ciber seems to be on top of the issues at hand, and a spokesperson for the outfit even stated that "the company believed that it had addressed all the problems, and that it expected to receive its initial federal accreditation later this month." We just hope that undercover chess functionality somehow goes unnoticed.[Via Slashdot]
Punchscan incorporates cryptography into e-voting
Considering the disaster that has been e-voting, we're not surprised to see another firm stepping forward with a slightly less complex alternative to confidently casting your ballot. Reverting back to the less problematic methods of paper-and-pencil voting, yet offering up a way to electronically store and track each vote, David Chaum and his research team have unveiled the Punchscan system to hopefully solve the world's e-voting woes. The cryptographic solution involves a double-sided ballot which is split into two halves using a hole punch, giving you one side to take home. The "receipt" reportedly doesn't disclose which candidate you voted for, and allows you to logon once home to verify that your vote was indeed cast, and cast for the intended party. So if you're worried that your hard-earned vote may be heading to File 13 rather than being counted, maybe you should start politicking to get Punchscan going in your neck of the woods, and if you're still confused about how this two-faced encryption dealio works, just peep the video, yeah?[Via Slashdot]
Quebec puts the brakes on electronic voting
While the U.S. mid-term elections are going full steam ahead with a myriad of maybe-reliable and not-so-reliable electronic voting systems in place, Quebec is pulling back from its adventures in e-voting, after the province's chief electoral officer Marcel Blanchet delivered a harsh report on the 2005 municipal elections. The voting machines were used in some 140 municipalities in the province last year but, according to the report, they went down like bad plate of poutine, suffering from blackouts and transmission errors, resulting in unreliable results -- although he adds that there's nothing that can be done about the results now except to move on. He also reported that the electronic voting machines weren't any faster or more economical than manual counting. As a result of the report, Quebec's Municipal Affairs Minister Nathalie Normandeau is accepting Blanchet's recommendation that the current moratorium on electronic voting put in place after last year's elections be maintained, apparently indefinitely. [Via Slashdot]
Virginia e-voting machines truncating candidates' names
We're not sure what the bigger story here is: the fact that some Virginia e-voting machines have been "broken" since they were purchased four years ago, or the fact that Diebold wasn't the manufacturer. It seems that three jurisdictions in the state -- Alexandria, Falls Church, and Charlottesville -- use machines made by Austin's Hart InterCivic, all of which cut off candidates' names and party affiliations on the summary screen used to verify a voter's choices before the ballot is cast. Since names are displayed properly on the pages of the individual races, this is admittedly not the world's greatest threat to democracy, but it does highlight the ridiculous amount of red tape required to fix a problem with these devices -- in this case, making adjustments for the larger font size being used. Even though this flaw was evident as far back as 2002, secretary of the State Board of Elections Jean Jansen said she only recently became aware it; meanwhile Hart InterCivic can't touch the machines until it performs a system-wide firmware upgrade next year, and even that is contingent upon certification from state regulators. The good news is that recent publicity about the issue has seemingly jostled Jansen out of her stupor and encouraged her to go on the offensive, as evidenced by her comment on the likelihood of fixes being in place by the 2007 elections: "You better believe it. If I have to personally get on a plane and bring Hart InterCivic people here myself, it'll be corrected." Hey, we're all for kidnapping programmers to fix these problems too, but bragging about it in the Post seems like a surefire way to get your felonious plans thwarted.
Rolling Stone interviews a Diebold whistleblower
In what is perhaps the most astonishing turn of events in the ongoing Diebold fiasco, a new article in the latest issue of Rolling Stone -- with extensive information direct from a named former company consultant -- makes one of the most damning cases against the embattled company. The article weaves an elaborate tale of how Diebold had at the very least some extremely skeezy deals signed in 2002 with the state of Georgia, which allowed Diebold to replace all existing voting equipment, and to speed things up by the fall election: "The company was authorized to put together ballots, program machines and train poll workers across the state - all without any official supervision." As if that weren't enough, days before the primaries, the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, personally distributed a patch to the elections software. The article goes on: "Georgia law mandates that any change made in voting machines be certified by the state. But thanks to Cox's [Georgia's Secretary of State] agreement with Diebold, the company was essentially allowed to certify itself." Before the election, the two Democratic candidates in the two major races (for one Senate seat and the state governorship) had been ahead in the polls, and on Election Day, Republicans won the two races by a slim margin -- and given that no paper trail exists there is no way to prove or disprove that the election wasn't tampered with in some way. And you wonder why we continue to insist on paper ballots for the time being?
