Calif. Official Bans Some Voting Machines [Calls for Criminal Investigation of Diebold]

Associated Press ^ | May 1, 2004 | Jim Wasserman

[AntiGuv]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The state's top elections official called for a criminal investigation of Diebold Election Systems Inc. as he banned use of the company's newest model touchscreen voting machine, citing concerns about its security and reliability.

Friday's ban will force up to 2 million voters in four counties, including San Diego, to use paper ballots in November, marking their choices in ovals read by optical scanners.

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley asked the attorney general's office to investigate allegations of fraud, saying Diebold had lied to state officials. A spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer said prosecutors would review Shelley's claims.

Diebold issued a statement saying it was confident in its systems and planned to work with election officials in California and throughout the nation to run a smooth election this fall.

The ban immediately affects more than 14,000 AccuVote-TSx machines made by Diebold, the leading touchscreen provider. Many were used for the first time in the March primaries and suffered failures.

In 10 other counties, Shelley decertified touchscreen machines but set 23 conditions under which they still could be used. That order involved 4,000 older machines from Diebold and 24,000 from its three rivals.

The decision follows the recommendations of a state advisory panel, which conducted hearings earlier this month.

Made just six months before a presidential election, the decision reflects growing concern about paperless electronic voting.

A number of failures involving touchscreen machines in Georgia, Maryland and California have spurred serious questioning of the technology. As currently configured, the machines lack paper records, making recounts impossible.

"I anticipate his decision will have an immediate and widespread impact," said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation and a frequent critic of the machines. "California is turning away from e-voting equipment, and other states are sure to follow."

Activists have been demanding paper printouts — required in California by 2006 — to guard against fraud, hacking and malfunction.

Diebold has been a frequent target of such groups, though most California county election officials say that problems have been overstated and that voters like the touchscreen systems first installed four years ago.

At least 50 million voters nationally were expected to use the ATM-like machines from Diebold and other companies in November.

California counties with 6.5 million registered voters have been at the forefront of touchscreen voting, installing more than 40 percent of the more than 100,000 machines believed to be in use nationally.

A state investigation released this month said Diebold jeopardized the outcome of the March election in California with computer glitches, last-minute changes to its systems and installations of uncertified software in its machines in 17 counties.

It specifically cited San Diego County, where 573 of 1,611 polling places failed to open on time because low battery power caused machines to malfunction.

Registrars in counties that made the switch to paperless voting said Shelley's decision to return to paper ballots would result in chaos.

"There just isn't time to bring this system up before November," Kern County Registrar Ann Barnett said. "It's absurd."

Diebold officials, in a 28-page report rebutting many of the accusations about its performance, said the company had been singled out unfairly for problems with electronic voting and maintained its machines are safe, secure and demonstrated 100 percent accuracy in the March election.

The company, a subsidiary of automatic teller machine maker Diebold, Inc., acknowledged it had "alienated" the secretary of state's office and promised to redouble efforts to improve relations with counties and the state.

[kellynla]

IMO after all is said and done, the punch card ballots are less expensive, less complicated and more accurate than any touch screen voting machine.

[AntiGuv]

I like optical scan voting myself, but I don't disagree with you either.

[backhoe]

Cross-linked:

-The Vote Fraud Archives--

[ABG(anybody but Gore)]

Activists have been demanding paper printouts — required in California by 2006 — to guard against fraud, hacking and malfunction.

Those selfish activists! Don't they realize how many hackers are going to lose their jobs at the DNC because of this decision? < /sarcasm >

[csvset]

the punch card ballots are less expensive, less complicated and more accurate than any touch screen voting machine.

Yep, we use punchcards here, (Virginia Beach,VA), I've yet to see a chad of any sort. It's simple, quick and easy.

[patton]

Why in heck don't we just use the ATM's?

Simple, quick, easy, leaves two paper records - one in the machine, one to the customer.

The things are everywhere, too - no need for absentee ballots.

And the banks execute billions of transactions a day, with very, very, few errors.

And they would be happy to do it - for a buck a vote. Much cheeper than our current efforts.

[Carry_Okie]

Simple, quick, easy, leaves two paper records - one in the machine, one to the customer.

Such machines can easily support two databases, report one, print the other.

And the banks execute billions of transactions a day, with very, very, few errors.

An ATM is just your checking account. A ballot is your freedom. The stakes are just a little different, no?

Paper ballots.

[eno_]

I'll tell you why:

Cameras.

Vote fraud by illegal aliens and other ineligble (i.e. felons) voters is the backbone of Democrat get out the vote efforts.

And system that could actually catch illegal voters would be opposed to the death by Democrats.

So know this: Democrats are literally stealing the country from YOU. Democrat governments lack legitimacy. They are musch more evil than your worst fears.

[mvpel]

Let's hear it for Jim March!!

[patton]

But it gives you a paper receipt - look at it! If it is different from your vote, challange!

[patton]

Camaras! even better - I had not thought of that.

The very fact that we DON'T use ATM's convinces me that someone has a vested interest in cheating.

[Carry_Okie]

But it gives you a paper receipt - look at it! If it is different from your vote, challange!

You won't know what your vote really was, because what the screen says and what the paper says may be the same, but that isn't necessarily what the machine will report to the tabulating computer upline. The way these systems work, it's easy for an administrator to get into it from a remote location and change your vote after you've left the polls.

Paper ballots.

[Carry_Okie]

Here's a pertinent piece I wrote in December 2002.

Ballot Transparency to Eliminate Fraudulent Counts

Voters have read and seen all sorts of assurances that the new touch-screen balloting systems are fool proof, tamper proof, and nothing to worry about. Many, including those who are familiar with the technology, are not at all reassured.

The concerns are on two levels. First, from the perspective of those not familiar with the technology, it is a device whose inner workings and inherent security they cannot possibly understand. If they can't understand it, how can they be assured that it is honest? Second, those who DO understand signal processing, software, and communications technology know that is far too easy to defraud the system in a way that would be irreversible and undetected. Either way, touch-screens are a loser.

Now, as users of ATMs, cell phones, the Internet, and other electronic media, it might at first seem a little strange that so many people have such concerns. Upon further consideration however, the key distinctions between voting and a service handling mere money become obvious:

• Customers have a choice of banking vendors. Citizens don’t have a choice of governments.
• There is a major difference between mere financial assets at risk, and a risk to individual liberty.

Governments are monopolies. One can go down the street to another bank and take the offending bank to court. An evil government can land you in prison (or worse) because they ARE the court. The stakes associated with voter fraud are far higher than with an ATM and so is the temptation to defraud the system.

Necessary and Sufficient

So, given that we are still smarting over hanging chads, what are the alternatives? Let’s begin to answer that question by looking at the requirements.

1. The system has to be simple and familiar to the voter.
2. There must be NO SOFTWARE involved, because it is too easy to change.
3. The system must be capable of completely manual operation.
4. The count must be capable of being validated by all parties involved and each count must be separate and distinct.
5. There must be no possibility to count a ballot twice or "lose" counts along the way.

Electronic sensors and interlocks are permissible as long as they can be duplicated manually.

Here is my proposal for a system that meets these requirements:

At the Polling Place

1. Ballot boxes are preprinted, serialized and tracked by a physical chain-of-custody document.
2. The box must be destroyed to be opened.
3. The box is locked under a ballot receiving machine.
4. The ballot receiving machine at the polling place reads the box number and records it on the ballot in Scantron form on the back side (fill in the dots). Note that one could do the same manually under observation.
5. The voter completes the standard optical ballot and delivers it to the receiving machine.
6. The machine prints the box number on the back of every ballot it accepts with a Scantron dot pattern. This too can be both read and performed manually. Then a dry film coating (basically an adhesive or heat activated tape) is applied to the ballot on the way into the sealed ballot box.
7. The coating is transparent but reveals a "watermark" when exposed to UV light. The ballot is now tamperproof.
8. The receiving machine totals the number of ballots in every box. The total is read manually and a receipt is delivered to each political party and candidate detailing the box numbers, precincts, and tally of ballots in every uniquely identified box.
9. Representatives of all Parties check the box tallies before the boxes leave the polling place.
10. If they agree on its accuracy, they record the ballot tally on the box using Scantron dots, initial it, and put a similar dry film over the number.

Note that the Scantron pattern is the perfect bridge between human and machine. It is readable by people for manual counting but does not require an optical character reading machine that needs cameras or software.

Both parties thus know the EXACT number of ballots cast in every precinct and in every box. Every box is signed. All parties can thus run check sums at the processing centers and verify the chain-of-custody.

At the Ballot Counting Center

1. The total of the ballots on the box is read by the counting machine. It would be very similar to the existing optical reader and might only require very minor modifications.
2. The counting machine reads the box code for precinct and ballot count or accepts that data input from a keypad read off the box by at least two witnesses with keys. The machine will not count the ballots without the UV visible watermark on the ballot over the votes AND matching precinct codes on the box and the ballot.
3. The machine halts and will not display the vote totals if the number of ballots recorded on the box and the number it counts do not match.
4. The ballots leave the counting machine get a NEW ballot box. Counted ballots are stamped again with output box number, recoated, and then deposited into the new sealed ballot box.
5. The new coating was applied in case of a recount, thus each ballot maintains a recount history.

[the right side jedi]

Optical scan has probably the least number of misvotes and is pretty easy to use. Not to mention its in paper. Of course these California people when they decided to ban punchcards, they didn't really think things through about what exactly they would replace them with. New flashy technology doesn't always mean better.

[Carry_Okie]

The very fact that we DON'T use ATM's convinces me that someone has a vested interest in cheating.

The Diebold system uses Microsoft Access as a database (appropriate choice, don't you think?). When the Diebold system was first audited for security, one reviewer reported in Wired Magazine that the operating system was so open to manipulation that, "It's not just a bug, it's a feature."

According to election industry officials, electronic voting systems are absolutely secure, because they are protected by passwords and tamperproof audit logs. But the passwords can easily be bypassed, and in fact the audit logs can be altered. Worse, the votes can be changed without anyone knowing, even the County Election Supervisor who runs the election system.

You might want to read the source article for this quote.

Great system. Perhaps you should restrict your grousing to something you understand a little better.

[Carry_Okie]

Of course these California people when they decided to ban punchcards, they didn't really think things through about what exactly they would replace them with.

Oh somebody thought it through all righty, It's worse than you realize. See the link in Post 16.

[FreeAtlanta]

lol, neat idea. However, my issue with giving a paper receipt is that some people can be thugged (or, Unioned - same difference) into voting a certain (democrat) way and have to show the evidence to keep from being beat up or loosing their jobs.

[faithincowboys]

The reason they don't like the touch screen voting is because they haven't found a wayto cheat the system yet. When GA and FLA got touchscreen voting machines, the Rats lost. The Rats only win when they cheat.

[patton]

Something I understand a little better? LOL.