Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole

BlackBoxVoting ^ | 8/26/04 | Bev Harris

[ninenot]

George Bush and Diebold are conspiring to rig this election (as they did 200), and all elections in the future so democrats can never again win. Not just presidential elections, but at all levels.

So what's the PROBLEM?

[califamily4W]

Would have missed this without a ping. Thank you!

[jdege]

A fellow I know sent this article to me, and it doesn't look good -- this appears to be a voting system engineered to enable election fraud on a massive scale.

It's not fraud, it's an engineer's back door.

The vote-gathering functions of the sytem (in which the vote counts are read from the individual machines and accumulated in a single total count) can only be efficiently tested if known figures are placed on the individual machines beforehand.

So naturally there's some way to put a specific count on a given machine.

The problem is that the security design was so poor that there was no provision for creating a protected back door - so the engineers created one that relied on obscurity.

The presence of this does not make me suspect intentional fraud, but it makes me seriously question the quality of the security design.

[tarawa]

No, Jim is not a Freeper. At least, not any more. He was kicked off when he responded to a personal attack that had been made on him.

[Constitution Day]

BTTT

[Joe Brower]

Interesting comment, jdege. Coming from you, I know this is on the level.

I will forward your persepective to Jim March and post his reply here.

Thanks,

[dd5339]

Something to keep an eye on.

Semper Fi

[Chemist_Geek]

I am seriously beginning to think we should go back to casting paper ballots on one day, and waiting until the next day(s) to count them.

I agree. There was a joke running around that computers allow someone to make thousands of errors per second, rather than just one or two.

I think that votes should be made on paper with indelible markers. I don't know about asking the media to embargo its reports until the next day, or at least until Alaska and Hawaii close; I don't think that's quite right.

[Redbob]

Zell gives 'em Zhell!

That man clearly learned public speaking on Sundays...

[MeekOneGOP]

My pleasure. :^)

[weegee]

Google Cache of Seattle Weekly

In fact, Harris' right-hand man is running against Reed. Andy Stephenson met Harris through Democratic Underground, a left-wing Web site (www.democraticunderground.com), and they immediately became close cohorts.

[weegee]

The Democrat protestors on the floor of the Republican convention are a sign that Civil War II is already here. So much for protections of the right to peaceful assembly.

Election 2000 also showed us that the cherished peaceful transfer of power is about to be a thing of the past.

[weegee]

I say embargo the results. The left tried to "trade" votes for Nader and Gore based on whether more votes were needed for Gore to clinch it. The contractual obligation (filed through a website form) was an agreement that a Gore Democrat would vote for Nader if Gore's vote in a state was either safe or completely shot.

The media starts "projecting" who has won the East Coast a few minutes after the polls close with 1% of the vote in. This last election came down to 0.52% difference in the vote NATIONALLY.

I don't even like the fact that there is a nongovernmental agency taking such close tabs on the election results prior to the polls closing. What is there to stop them from leaking "action reports" to Democrat knock & drag teams throughout the day? Ethics? Don't make me laugh.

[jdege]

I don't understand what's so difficult about optical scan.

Where I vote, I take a mark-sense ballot to a cheap little kiosk, make my marks, then carry the marked ballot over to the scanner and feed it in.

Simple, efficient, and totally trackable. The only way to cheat is to either change the paper ballots before the voter inserts them into the machine, or to add or delete the paper ballots from the locked cabinet in the machine.

Both of which are very easy for the poll watchers to notice.

If you want a touch screen, make it a stand-alone, no-memory interface to an optical-scan system.

That is, have a terminal with a touch-screen interface that prints out a human- and machine-readable paper ballot, and then have the voter carry the ballot to the optical scanner just like in the current system.

None of this nonsense with accumulating counts inside the machine - the machines just transfer what's been selected onto the paper ballot.

[Chemist_Geek]

The key is the preparation of a human-readable permanent record of the vote. Nothing else will do. I agree that accumulating votes inside the machine is nonsense.

I like your idea of a touch-screen machine to prepare a ballot. Then the voter takes the printed card over and drops it in the box.

[weegee]

Optical scanners aren't so hot. We had one at my high school for tests. The teachers knew that they weren't so great at matching all of the answers. They would run the test key through the machine and add that many points to all test scores.

Now consider those to be votes, each wrong answer would be a candidate who missed his vote.

[Joe Brower]

Good find -- thanks! I have sent this along to Jim March to see what he thinks.

[ForGod'sSake]

Well, guess it's time then to pull the plug, huh.

Hmmm, gonna have to keep an eye on this little item. You can bet the parties' mukkity-mucks are all over this already, but for some reason it's flying below the radar. Wouldn't want the ill-informed electorate getting antsy and begin to question the vote counting now would they? It's for our own good you know ;^)

FGS

[ForGod'sSake]

Thanks fer the ping Meek. This bears watching, eh?

FGS

[MeekOneGOP]

Definitely.