GOP Urges Investigation of Voting Machine Performance

ABC News ^ | January 10, 2004

[GregD]

Hello. I’m the webmaster of www.verifiedvoting.org.

I’m a Democrat, and you folks presumably will want to flame me on that point alone. But if you would bear with me, perhaps we could avoid that. I need to talk about an issue that affects all of us, and I am not here to pick a fight. I need your help.

VerifiedVoting.org is NOT about conspiracy theory. We are NOT about screaming about “Wally O’Dell delivering the votes to GWB”, but I do have to admit that his remarks were about as ill-conceived as they might have possibly been, and have made it a lot easier to recruit activists to this issue from certain segments of our population. And we certainly are NOT about “one party or the other is trying to rig the machines or steal an election.”

What we ARE about is looking at this situation from a non-partisan, academic, computer-science perspective. Our goal is to see that legislation and procedures are established and enforced to make sure that elections are counted properly; them may the “real” winner prevail, and we can all rest assured that the win was indeed valid and fair.

OK, so let’s frame the situation: we have systems which run proprietary code that nobody gets to look at. At the certification stage there is no organized code review, at the development level there are no standards that have to be met. As such, the certification process appears to be completely lame. When I developed mission-critical applications for a major international retailer, we had team walkthroughs that senior members of the tech staff participated in. Each line of code was inspected, each module carefully discussed. So when you look at the observations of the Johns Hopkins study http://avirubin.com/vote/, along with other studies, it is clear that the Diebold code completely sucked but that it was not rejected by the ITA. (Sure, the code that was reviewed by Rubin was not current at the time of the review, but it was likely “current code” at an earlier point, and the certification process has NOT substantially improved since then.) Why did this get past the ITA? Because they (the ITA) don’t get to see the code – all they do is run some (undisclosed to the public) tests, give it a kiss and tell it “ya look pretty, have a nice day… See ya…” If I presented that crap to a senior manager in my former shop, I’d get canned – plain and simple. Boom, outta there, have a nice life…

So, we have these systems running secret application code that stores our votes, our precious and irreplaceable votes, without so much as an audit trail. Buy gas? Get a receipt. Buy food? Get a receipt. Get cash or make an ATM deposit? Damn right we get a receipt! Our vote is more valuable than any of those things, and do the machines print anything that allows verification of our votes? Nope, sorry – don’t think so… What? And with no audit trail, be that paper or whatever other technology might be is verifiable in the future, there is no means of verifying the results of an election. If the computer malfunctions, we can’t prove it. If a bug creeps in, we won’t know. Can we do a recount? Absolutely not – all we can do is re-print the same totals that were questioned in the first place.

A common arguement that frequently comes up is related to cost. My response is "what is the price of democracy". Also, if the vendors want the business, make them find a way to build that into the product at a reasonable price. They stand to sell tens (hundreds?) of thousands of these at around $5k-6k a pop. And in San Diego, CA one vendor already committed to throw them in for free. So as far as I'm concerned, forget the cost question - it just does not seem to apply.

Is this a partisan issue, from one side or the other? Not the last time I checked, although some would like to frame it that way… VerifiedVoting.org refuses to – it simply is NOT a partisan issue…

Has this caused problems in elections? Yes, for both parties, in recent state elections we have problems in (at least) Maryland, Virginia and (of all places) Broward County Florida...

Broward (just in the past week or so) is a total meltdown. They had a single race in which 7 Republicans were seeking a state legislative seat. 134 votes were not counted by the touchscreen machines. The race was won by 12 votes, well under the .25 percent level for a mandatory recount (state law). But you cannot recount the vote with paperless touchscreen systems. They are not designed for that.

A number of these instances are listed here: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article_text.asp?articleid=997

So that’s the issue – we have these machines running programs that are NOT REQUIRED to achieve the sort of levels of quality control expectations or scrutiny that any corporate mission-critical software application currently demands, the security on the systems appears to be TOTALLY out of control, yet this is how we are supposed to run our democracy. This just is not right!

It gets worse... We have procedures that are not being followed. How do we know? Because people made a big enough stink that California decided to audit Diebold in 17 counties. (In case you don’t know, all hardware / firmware / software needs to be certified at the Federal level, assigned a NASED number, then approved by the State.) So they run an audit and what percentage of the randomly selected systems are in compliance? NONE! ZIP! NADA! Whose fault? Not sure yet, we will start to determine this on January 15 when the VSP meets again – but it looks like Diebold breached the public trust by supplying (or installing) software that was not certified, and the counties allowed the installation of non-compliant code (or installed it and didn’t check to make sure it was good to go.) http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article_text.asp?articleid=978

So what do we do about it? Well, thousands of our fellow Americans have spent the past 6 months (or more) calling Congressmen and asking them to support HR2239. That bill is ok, could be stronger, but it will have to do for now – time is running out. Frankly it would be nice if there was a stronger automatic recount (right now it calls for .5 percent, and that really needs to go up, just to make sure these beasts aren’t hosed.) It would be nice to boost this in conference committee, assuming we get that far, and before the bills become law.

Currently, we’re looking at just under 100 Democrat cosponsors and 3 or 4 Republicans. I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand those numbers. I’m glad we have a few Republicans that have joined in agreeing that a fairly counted election really still is the core of America’s democracy. But we need more, and that’s why I am here. I need your help, and I need it pronto please…

How can you help? Call your Congressmen (ask for their support of HR2239) and Senators (ask for support of S1980 which is a duplicate of HR2239). Help us get organizations to endorse this important legislation. Here are organizations that already stand behind these important bills: http://www.verifiedvoting.org/endorsers_s1980.asp

There are other action items on our site. I beg you – in respect for what our forefathers left for us – please help us get this done and protect the core of our democracy.

Here is what your own people are saying:
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Back in August, lelio said
“I'm more scared as Diebold's engineering staff sounds like a bunch of clowns. An MS Access database on Windows 98? Are they asking to be hacked into?” He referred to this story. I completely agree with him.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm

And in http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/973667/posts, Timesink said:
There is little question, though, that we can never totally trust the results of any election conducted via computerized voting, and such machines should not be allowed to be used (and indeed, I give it less than ten years until they start being outlawed state by state as various scandals pop up, real or imagined). For all the mess that Florida 2000 turned out to be, at least we had actual physical ballots to deal with. The optimal solution, of course, would be going back to something along the lines of the old standards: Paper ballots in sealed boxes; monitors from both parties (and anyone else that wants to watch) at every precinct; multiple police officers riding along as ballot boxes are delivered to the county courthouse; all boxes opened and all votes counted in front of cameras from the news media, local government and any public citizens that wished to make their own records ... along with laws requiring proof of identity in order to vote
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Whoever lelio and Timesink are, I’m with you 100 percent. How can we TOTALLY trust these systems, simply looking at it from the programming perspective? Programmers make mistakes, and with the current certification procedures, those mistakes will NOT all get caught. You would be amazed if you looked at the modification logs and bug lists for the Diebold stuff. These are NOT simple programs, and complicated programs are prone to error.

The only practical solution is to demand visibility into the programs, a verification procedure that allows each citizen to check their vote, and a robust automatic (random) recount to make certain that there is no program errors, and no fraud (on EITHER side).

Help us get this done – Please! Come to our site, have a look, and write to us if you have comments or questions.

www.verifiedvoting.org

[Darksheare]

OUCH.
That's almost like the State of NJ with the question of whether or not to preserve or tear down a certain historic building.
The one estimate was 2 mill to not only preserve it, but make it usable as office space, which was needed for the Park Service.
Well, NJ spent 11.2 million to tear the building down.
They then turned around and asked for an office building to be built, of the exact same square footage of usable office space of the building they just tore down.

Hope I'm making sense.
I was up way early this morning and am dragging..

[DBrow]

Mark, if we had a system like that then every shop steward would try to collect union member's reciepts to assure correct voting. And if everyone in your shop is doing it, it will be hard for you not to, especially if the puppy chewed it up every election.

[antaresequity]

Sounds to me like there is a whopping piece of pie here for independent consultants and consulting firms to get these civil folks set up.

I see an opportunity...

[Vermonter]

An ideal system would print out a receipt with a confirmation of how the voter just entered his vote. This receipt could be deposited into a locked box at the polling place.

There would then be a hard copy available for verification or for the actual vote count if the electronic system fails

[DBrow]

Electronic systems must have a paper trail- otherwise fraud is way too easy.

If the 5K$ machine spits out a punched card with your choices on it for your review, then you stick that in a traditional turn-the-crank voting machine, then there is a hope for independent confirmation. But what takes precedence if there is a conflict? The server HD will give the same tally exactly every single time, while the cards will vary slightly.

I think the old way, mark an X with a pencil and have sworn people count them while being watched by sworn people, is the best even if it is cumbersome. This limits cheating to limited areas and requires many people to be silent if there is fraud.

Most problems have arisen from mechanized voting. Way back, some people would reach around behind the voting machine, untwist the seal wire, and press the "clear counter" lever (mechanical counter on a rachet). Now what do you do? Those votes are gone!

[DBrow]

So if I had the tearoff reciept I could request to see the punchcard the machine printed out for me? The card would help a recount, but if you inspect the card at the polling place and you goofed or the machine shpongled your vote, you would get it fixed before authenticating your vote.

If someone defrauded the system somewhere, being able to verify what is on any individual ballot would not be particularly useful information for a voter- it would say how you voted, and you already checked that when you pushed "Verify" or "Go" or whatever.

[GregD]

"have the votes counted by two diferent software programs running simutaneoulsy"

That is a proposal I could easily stand behind, if we could gain concensus from the citizen activists and legislators to embrace it.

I'll counter your suggestion by asking that you come to our site, engage in direct volunteerism, and help us form a combination of thoughts that can be passed into law.

I figure we have until late February to get these bills passed. If they are passed later, it is unlikely that the effective dates will be before Nov 2004. HR2239 and S1980 need to get passed, and when they go to conference, there will be changes negotiated. Interested and informed parties need to band together and submit proposed improvements that get rolled into the bills before their final passage (assuming we can influence this.)

Regardless of who wins in November, remember what Florida 2000 did in terms of how it strained the Nation. These paperless systems could result in such disasters nationwide. I don't look forward to that, and I doubt anyone else does. Please help us get these laws passed early in the new session.

If this issue is important to you, please join us.

[JoeFromSidney]

The user selects his values, submits them, is given a chance to verify them, and they are recorded on a data base.

At the same time a scantron quality receipt is submitted in triplicate. One for the voter, one for a mutually selected independent master to verify on classic scantron equipment, and the third to be kept by the vote tally folks.

This still doesn't verify that what's printed on the receipt is what was stored on the hard drive or other data base. Anything without a verifiable audit trail, preferably a paper trail, is out as far as I'm concerned.

My wife and I will vote absentee from now on. At least those ballots are on paper.

[Kaslin]

134 votes were not counted by the touchscreen machines.

The reason they were not counted was because these 134 voters didn't push the Vote button when they were done.

[Vermonter]

No, I'm talking about having a paper copy of your electronic vote in a locked box at the polling place. You would verify that the paper copy matched your intended vote and the hard copy would be available for a hand recount if the electronics failed or were questioned

[GOPJ]

When the elite media didn't question paperless scanners, some suspected democrats didn't want the issue questioned. Vote fraud has, for the past 50 years, been done almost exclusively by democrats. Scanners make cheating easier.

Our vote is more valuable than any of those things, and do the machines print anything that allows verification of our votes? Nope, sorry – don’t think so… What? And with no audit trail, be that paper or whatever other technology might be is verifiable in the future, there is no means of verifying the results of an election. If the computer malfunctions, we can’t prove it. If a bug creeps in, we won’t know. Can we do a recount? Absolutely not – all we can do is re-print the same totals that were questioned in the first place.

[GregD]

Thank you for your kindness. The truth is, whoever "cheated more" really does not enter into this issue, does it? You didn't do it, I didn't do it, and it is unlikely that anyone either of us personally know was responsible for it.

Q: Who's government is it?
A: It is our government.

Q: Who's responsibility if our "leaders" fail to observe the laws of our land, if other "leaders" fail to force those offenders to uphold the law, or if legislation is created that is not for our common benefit?
A: Personally, I feel that if we wish to live in a country that respects the laws of civil behaviour (including election law), then we need to personally step forward and help "convince" those leaders that only ethical behaviour is acceptible, regardless of party affiliation. If there is a breakdown on either side, it simply motivates others to see that as clearance to act in kind. And by my own efforts, I am making a stand and saying "I DEMAND FAIRLY COUNTED ELECTIONS!"

I seek those of you who agree to join me in passion and mutual determination.

Helping to lead this effort means I spend a lot of time on the phone with volunteers, managing the web site, and other activities (like occasionally sleeping). It also means that I do not spend a lot of time reading and posting to sites, and it is unlikely that you will see me spend a lot of time here (assuming I don't get zotted as you mentioned), and that I remain welcome to post. (If you seek my input, I am easily reached through the web site.)

With that said, I really need people to take a leadership role in this community, with regard to the electronic voting issue. I put in a bit of time in DU trying to lead activism, and make a sincere effort to not apply any partisan slant over there. I use the same screen name if you need to find me. But there are far fewer hours available than are necessary to do this work.

I need help from you who frequent this board, and who care about this issue. We are up against HUGE corporations with way more financial resources than we do, and from past experience they seem uninclined to add the paper trail - we all need to work together to force that change. And to date, the media is doing a mediocre job of covering the issue. CBS covered the breakdown in Virginia (link on my site), but we need more coverage. And until that happens, it means we have to work harder to get the word out. Please, if this is important to you, keep this issue active here in Free Republic. Tell everyone you know, and help us get the bills passed.

If you are in California, there is a critical meeting on Thursday Jan 15 where the next phase of the audit results will be revealed. Sacramento, Sec. of State office, 10AM. I would like to meet you there.

[GregD]

"The text of H.R. 2239 and its details are here"

Are you talking about the link from the DHTML flyout menu? That is supposed to open a new browser to the Thomas web site. I keep having trouble with that link for some reason. Thanks for pointing it out.

Another link to that page is here:
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/fair_elections.asp

[PGalt]

Thanks for the post and welcome. Great topic.

[GregD]

"Call me a cynic Greg, but you appear too sincere, polite, and bright to be a Democrat. Exactly what are you trying to pull?? "

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In my opinion, the internet and these anonymous message boards (Yahoo for example) has allowed for a fundamental breakdown in social conduct to become the norm. That has been further decayed by the bitter partisan politics that exist in the US today.

If we were sitting in a restaurant, a theater, or a camp site - how would we conduct ourselves? Would be explode into bitter accusations? I know I do not!

We have too much at stake to permit impolite behaviour to impact this issue. We are talking about the core of our democracy - the right to really believe that voting matters. Each American has the right to express their political viewpoints, to elect those who (we perceive to) reflect our personal values, and then we expect those leaders to conduct themselves in our best interests. I need YOUR help to assure that our confidence in those RIGHTS are maintained.

As for zombies, cadavers voting in one district or another, Democrat or Republican - it all has to be cleaned up. As I mentioned in another post above, this whole system is a mess. When we get this problem solved, the next thing to do is to get corporate financing out of our elections. Who the hell invited anyone to corrupt the system, and drive the legislative process based on special interest multi-million dollar donations to campaigns? We need to work together to fix all this stuff. I'm in my 50's, been voting for horrible candidates all my life, and it is time we citizens take back our elections and run things cleanly. You with me?

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One more point. I have (had) a successful web development business before this issue came to my attention. Ellen, another member on our team, earned her living as a self-employed technical writer. Neither of us market our business services any longer, and turn down work regularly. We are each working for free, and living off of our savings. If someone (new or current client) calls about web work, I talk to them about electronic voting. I do that at the risk that I may lose the business.

I am not going to take that level of risk, or make that type of commitment, then come here in any other manner than pure sincerity. I need your help. America needs OUR help!

Please join us today in this important work.

www.verifiedvoting.org

[GregD]

Dude, I didn't come here to debate election steals in the past, and I'm the last to defend anyone who has done that.

Frankly, I didn't really follow politics that closely before the past few years, and that is unfortunate. We should all have held the respective parties and candidates at a higher level of ethics.

Want to talk about how to get the paper trail on the voting machines, or proceed with "business as usual and getting worse all the time"?

If you want to talk about military votes, then the next problem to solve is SERVE. That is an experiment regarding Internet voting which will be used for the military. Hell, they can't keep the most secure sites from being hacked, and www.votehere.com (who was hacked in October) is trying to get that business.

[lepton]

"The text of H.R. 2239 and its details are here"

My goof. I was on http://www.verifiedvoting.org/fair_elections.asp and hit the link to the text. The next link I wanted was just off-screen. :)

[GregD]

You are making complete sense. What a stupid freaking idea - I hate that sort of abuse.

Ya know, there are a lot of folks on the "left" that see many things in a similar manner to the "right". I don't want "big government" - I want "ethical government" that "spends wisely" and "conducts wise investment and planning for the future". I doubt that is hard to disagree with.

The problem, IMO, is that these turds that get elected and are then corrupted by campaign contributors proceed to make decisions that NONE of us would endorse if we had the ability to influence those decisions.

(laughing) Imagine if WE had a line-item veto which WE would vote on and take the crap out of the bills they pass... That would certainly straighten a few things out.

[GregD]

That is EXACTLY what HR2239 / S1980 will offer.

Go look and see what happened already in VA and FL, in the absence of a paper trail. I have those stories linked from the front page of www.verifiedvoting.org - Do we want this happening all over the country, for either side, in November

Help us get those bills passed into law so we don't have another meltdown in November.

[lepton]

My wife and I will vote absentee from now on. At least those ballots are on paper.

Assuming they bother to count them...which often they don't.