Electronic Voting Machines

[Coldwolf]

Yeah, remember I said there was a problem in the 2004 election?


Guess what?



Government Accountability Office says..um yeah...there were some problems...."Concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."


- A non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the security of election voting machines in America, released on Friday (http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001940.htm) confirms many observers' darkest suspicions about what the potential for technocratic tampering during the 2000/2004 Presidential Elections. And guess what? It's too late to mitigate these potentialities before the 2006 mid-terms.

[MadScot]

You mean the mystery 10,000 Bush votes from florid that nobody could find the memory card for might be considered a "problem" go figure.

[Coldwolf]

Nah, that was the 2000 election...this is the 2004..

Examples of Voting System Problems and Vulnerabilities.
# Cast ballots, ballot definition files, and audit logs could be modified.

# Supervisor functions were protected with weak or easily-guessed passwords.

# Systems had easily picked locks and power switches that were exposed and unprotected.

# Local jurisdictions misconfigured their electronic voting systems, leading to election day problems.

# Voting systems experienced operational failures during elections.

# Vendors installed uncertified electronic voting systems.

Speaking about the GAO report in the joint press release, one congressman described it as "a wake up call."

Republican Rep. Boehlert said, "I wholeheartedly endorse the GAO recommendations, which underscore the need for the Election Assistance Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to continue their work to establish standards and testing procedures for voting equipment. This work must move ahead on an ambitious schedule."

Democratic Rep. Gordon added, "The foundation of democracy rests upon the accuracy, integrity and security of our voting system"

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, a tireless champion for election reform and leading force behind the landmark report "Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio 2004", has just blogged about the report.

He says the report "lends important credibility to the cause of election reform generally, and more specifically to requiring that every machine have a voter verified paper ballot that is used in election days audits and, if discrepancies are found in those audits, becomes the official record for the election."

"Despite the many official assurances that the problems of the past elections were isolated and few," Conyers writes, "the election system is indeed riddled with problems and flaws."

The "bottom line," says Conyers, is that until these matters are seriously addressed, and "significant security and controls" are put in place with our voting machines, "American citizens have no reason to have complete confidence in our democracy."

Conyers further enumerates a list of notable and troubling security shorcomings identified by the GAO:

1. Some electronic voting systems did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, thus making it possible to alter them without detection.

2. It is easy to alter a file defining how a ballot appears, making it possible for someone to vote for one candidate and actually be recorded as voting for an entirely different candidate.

3. Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards.

4. Access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network.

5. Supervisory across to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords.

6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy.

7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail.

8. GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel.


The complete joint bi-partisan press release, issued by six U.S. House of Representative members, follows...
Read the rest. (http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001940.htm)

[MadScot]

As coincidence would have it, Mark Crispin Miller’s new book, Fooled Again (Basic Books), documenting the Republican theft of the 2004 presidential election, arrived in the same mail delivery with the January 12 edition of the Defuniak Springs Herald, the locally owned weekly newspaper in a Florida panhandle county seat.

The Florida panhandle is thorough-going Republican. Even Democrats run as Republicans. Nevertheless, the newspaper’s editor, Ron Kelley, believes that American political life is measured by something larger than party affiliation. In his editorial, "The shepherds and the sheep," Kelley reports that two Florida counties have banned any further use of Diebold voting machines after witnessing a professional demonstration that the machines, contrary to Diebold’s claim, are easily hacked to record votes differently from the way in which they are cast by voters.

The pre-election statement by Diebold’s CEO that he would work to deliver the election to Bush was apparently no idle boast. In five states where the new "foolproof" electronic voting machines were used, the vote tallies differed substantially from the exit polls. Such a disparity is unusual. The chances of exit polls in five states being wrong are no more than one in one million.

[tocools]

And you guys believe all the **** you read off a Blogg???????????
OMG I am glad your not in power we all would be dead or in prison sheeeeeeeeeeeee

[Coldwolf]

Tocools, the "blog" you refered to from the first post in this thread , Bradblog, was reporting (reporting is something reporters do), or a reoprt issued by the GAO. The GAO is the Government Accountability Office. The GOA is an investigative arm of the Congress. And had you clicked the link and read the article, you would see that it has a link to a PFD version of the report issued, and excerpts from the GAO report. The "blog" also reported that a bi-partisan press release was issued by 6 members of Congress, 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats, including Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) and Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), Judiciary Committee Chair F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI), and Science Committee Chair Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) and Ranking Member Bart Gordon (D-TN).

They apparently believed the GAO report.

Heres what the Report said in part.

Examples of Voting System Problems and Vulnerabilities.
# Cast ballots, ballot definition files, and audit logs could be modified.

# Supervisor functions were protected with weak or easily-guessed passwords.

# Systems had easily picked locks and power switches that were exposed and unprotected.

# Local jurisdictions misconfigured their electronic voting systems, leading to election day problems.

# Voting systems experienced operational failures during elections.

# Vendors installed uncertified electronic voting systems.

If those things don't bother you Tocools, then you aren't the man I thought you were. I believe in our form of government, a democracy, and to force a system of voting on us that is so corruptable and unaccountable is to take away our right to vote.

[MarkB]

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