Posted on 09/08/2004 3:32:42 AM PDT by Former Military Chick
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer joined a lawsuit Tuesday alleging that voting equipment company Diebold Inc. sold the state shoddy hardware and software, exposing elections to hackers and software bugs.
California's Alameda County also joined the false claims case, originally filed by a computer programmer and voting rights advocate. Faulty equipment in the March primary forced at least 6,000 of 316,000 voters in the county east of San Francisco to use backup paper ballots instead of the paperless voting terminals.
The lawsuit is the first e-voting case to rely on an obscure legal provision for whistleblowers who help the government identify fraud. Programmer Jim March and activist Bev Harris, who first filed the case in November, are seeking full reimbursement for Diebold equipment purchased in California.
Alameda County has spent at least $11 million on paperless touchscreen machines. State election officials have spent at least $8 million.
Because the lawsuit relies on an obscure provision called "qui tam," March and Harris could collect up to 30 percent of a reimbursement. The state could collect triple damages from Diebold, or settle out of court.
The attorney general's decision to join the e-voting lawsuit is unusual. The government declines to participate in about 70 percent of all qui tams filed, said Bob Bauman, a private investigator and former government consultant.
"The state clearly believes there's merit to the case," said Berkeley, Calif., attorney Lowell Finley, who represents March and Harris. "This is a significant event and good news for us."
Thomas W. Swidarski, Diebold senior vice president, said the state's intervention could lead to a "fair and dispassionate examination of the issues raised in the case."
Also Tuesday, the attorney general announced he would not pursue criminal charges against Diebold. Earlier this year, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley banned one Diebold system after he found uncertified software that "jeopardized" the outcome of elections in several counties, and state voting officials began considering filing a criminal lawsuit against the company.
"We fully cooperated with the state as it looked into the issues and have always believed that the attorney general would reach this conclusion," Swidarski said.
Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar said the decision to join the lawsuit came after months of investigating problems with Diebold equipment. In the March primary, 573 of 1,038 polling places in San Diego County failed to open on time because of computer malfunctions.
The state will likely file its own complaint or an amended complaint within several weeks, if the parties don't settle out of court, Dresslar said.
Qui tam - often used to find fraud involving Medicare or defense contracts - is a provision of the Federal Civil False Claims Act. Some states have similar acts. Individuals tip off the government to embezzlers or shoddy contractors, and the whistleblowers collect as much as 30 percent of the reimbursement.
09/07/04 23:46 EDT
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I have a degree in Computer Science and worked for 20 years in the defense industry and IMHO, paperless voting terminals are a bad, bad idea - just too easy for someone to sneak in extraneous code that might not be uncovered for years.
I have a solution. Make everyone record their vote vocally. Can't leave hanging chads and there is no doubt about who you are voting for.
So, say the error rate for paper ballots is one per thousand. The electronic machines would have reduced paper ballot errors from 316 to 6.
What's the problem here? It is not like the paper ballots didn't count. Sure, the paper ballots are probably more of a hassle, but I never saw the Right to Convenience mentioned anywhere in the US Constitution.
ping
If you think hanging chads were a problem in 2000, verbal voting systems will be even worse. I don't think it would work for all languages, dialects, and accents. There would be a lack of anonymity that would inhibit people from voting at all. There are people with medical conditions that would have trouble using this method. Finally, it would be much slower to conduct recounts as the voice recordings would have to be resampled.
http://www.securitytracker.com/alerts/2004/Aug/1011098.html
SecurityTracker Alert ID: 1011098
SecurityTracker URL: http://securitytracker.com/id?1011098
CVE Reference: GENERIC-MAP-NOMATCH (Links to External Site)
Date: Aug 31 2004
Impact: Modification of user information
Vendor Confirmed: Yes
Version(s): 1.18.18, 1.18.19, and 1.18.23; possibly others
Description: A vulnerability was reported in Diebold's Global Election Management System (GEMS). A local or remote authenticated user can modify votes.
BlackBoxVoting.org reported that the Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains an undocumented backdoor account that can be exploited to modify votes recorded on the system.
A local or remote authenticated user can enter a two-digit code in a certain "hidden" location to cause a second set of votes to be created on the system. This second set of votes can be modified by the user and then read by the voting system as legitimate votes, the report said.
GEMS 1.18.18, GEMS 1.18.19, and GEMS 1.18.23 are affected.
The vendor was reportedly notified on July 8, 2003.
Impact: A local or remote authenticated user can modify votes in the database.
Solution: No vendor solution was available at the time of this entry.
Vendor URL: www.diebold.com/dieboldes/GEMS.htm (Links to External Site)
Cause: Access control error
Underlying OS: Windows (Any)
And that's just one of a number of serious flaws in the design of the software. It's based on Microsoft Access, 'nuff said.
Frankly, it's all Greek to me. I'm a user, not a programmer.
I was just stating that having 6,000 people rely on paper ballots does not consitute a failure, IMHO. Wholesale manipulation of the result is another matter altogether.
Frankly, I think like punch cards. I know it is unfashionable to say so, but punch cards are reletively difficult to manipulate and provide a paper record of the vote. If all else fails, one can rely on a brute-force re-count that will come pretty darn close to the actual vote. Sure there are some brain-dead voters who are too stupid or too drunk to figure them out, but these people are going to go into the booth and puke all over the computer as well. One should never underestimate the stupidity of the left tail of the bell curve.
A system using punch cards that reviews the vote for validity and displays the result to the voter for verification on a screen would be ideal, and perfectly feasible from a technical point of view. If the voter makes a selection mistake, submits an invalid ballot or fails to punch the chad all the way through, he could void that ballot and ask for a new one. Simple, easy, and resistant to manipulation.
Personal list.
BTTT!!!!!!!
I wonder if they will dump Diebold and give all the business to Sequoia now.
That would be Bill Jones.
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