Diebold Voting Machine Woes 2.0
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Elections
First, remember last month when those Princeton students hacked into the Diebold machines, uploaded some code and subsequently changed election results with absolutely no trace? Well, if not, click here and read my post about it.
Now we’ve got another situation, and it’s just as ugly. Basically, Diebold is not being honest, and it has the potential to affect the upcoming election.
Oct. 22, 2006 â€â€? Cheryl Kagan, a former Maryland Democratic legislator, was shocked when she opened her mail Wednesday morning.Inside, she discovered three computer discs. With them was an anonymous letter saying the discs contained the secret source code for vote-counting that could be used to alter the votes cast through Maryland’s new electronic voting machines. [...]
Diebold, the company that makes the voting machines, told ABC News, “These discs do not alter the security of the Diebold touch-screen system in any way,” because election workers can set their own passwords.
But ABC News has obtained an independent report commissioned by the state of Maryland and conducted by Science Applications International Corporation revealing that the original Diebold factory passwords are still being used on many voting machines.
Leaving the election results in the hands of a private interest with proprietary software is, quite simply, DUMB. Not everything is best left to the private sector, and this is one of those times. If we care enough about our Democracy, we need something consistent and reliable. Diebold’s machines leave too many unanswered questions and are too vulnerable.
What we need is for the government to build Election 2.0 machines so they can’t push the responsibility off onto a company. We also need the exact same machines across the entire US. No more of this mix-and-match nonsense!! Arghh!!!
This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 and is filed under Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 23rd, 2006 at 12:46 pm
ISTM that having the same machines in every precinct would make the problem worse; it would mean that someone who discovered a successful strategem for hacking the machines could do the same thing everywhere.
October 23rd, 2006 at 2:47 pm
The think that scares the crap out of me with these machines is Diebold ceo Walden O’Dell and many of the other officers in the company are staunch supporters of the GOP, contributing personally and through fund-raising efforts.
Not sure I trust a device for elections made by someone who is so firmly in one camp
October 23rd, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Though having the same machines everywhere could be an invitation to hackers, it also presents a great opportunity to make hack-proof machines.
One of the biggest problems some of these machines have is that they are using commercial software such as Windows CE and Access (which is unsecurable) to handle the operations of the machine. For an operation as simple as voting, all you really need is a simple program, possibly even coded onto unhackable firmware, with no editable software anywhere in the machine. The smaller the program is, the harder it is to sneak a few dozen lines of hack software into it without detection. Open-source code is also a great way to protect against hackers, since many security experts seek to overcome challenges like those to make a name for themselves within their community.
Mind you, I’m a programmer but no security expert, so I’d refer you to the hundreds of articles such experts have likely written (and been ignored) about how to make hack-proof voting machines (recommendation #1 - PAPER TRAIL). It’s time we move our country into the next century and return from the lies and deceit back to the Democratic process.
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Someone tell me why this is “news”?
Like…here for example (I hope that comes out)
October 23rd, 2006 at 8:11 pm
This is sooo annoying! Same as having fossil-aged congressmen voting on internet issues. UGH!!!
We have politicians and government managers making buying decisions about voting machines, while they are utterly CLUELESS about security issues. They would not even know which “expert” advice to believe, yet they are “in charge.” Great.
Or, maybe they know damn well what they are using: machines they can manipulate.
I am using an absentee ballot in the remote hope that it might be counted correctly.
This COULD be done securely & with verification. Why the hell is it not happening?!!
October 24th, 2006 at 9:15 am
We have so much innovative technology in this country, and then we have these crappy voting machines. Our polling places are set up to look like my 3rd grade science fair, with cardboard partitions and 1980’s technology. It’s a huge disconnect. We might as well stick to scantron.
October 24th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
1980’s? More like 1940’s…some districts have been using the same equipment for 50 years.
October 24th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Can someone please explain why everyone is so insistent on using electronic voting machines to actually store and tabulate the ballots? Most of the electorial problems we’ve had have involved voters misreading and/or mismarking the ballot. In other words, they’ve had problems with the “user interface”. This is a problem that a computer could easily solve. You could use a mouse or touch screen to make your choice and the computer could warn you if you didn’t vote in a particular race or marked two candidates from the same race or whatever. When you are sure that you’re finished, you hit a button and…
The ballot prints out. You take the print out and drop it in the box. Maybe it could make two printouts so you can keep one as a safeguard.
This would solve a lot of the problems without creating the security nightmare of having the PC store the ballots and having election workers (who are often not real tech-savvy) trying to upload the votes somewhere. If a voting machine fails the polling place is out a voting machine but no votes are actually lost. Hacking is still a concern, but it’s a lot more managable because people actually have a slip of paper to look at.
Why are we making this so complicated?
October 24th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
Donovan.
Just remember that India, with a voting population probably 300 times that of the US, STILL uses paper ballots, and is refusing to change to voting machines (for a number of very good reasons primary among which is that the paper WORKS).
It takes something like 3 weeks to complete the counting of votes.
Would it cost too much for the US? What price is democracy?