Free Republic

California lawmakers on Wednesday debated the use of open-source software in the state’s electronic voting systems in hopes it might build public confidence in the nascent technology. Sen. Debra Bowen (D-California) called the hearing, citing successful use of open-source software—programs based on widely published code—by large companies including Amazon, AOL, and IBM. No action was expected to be taken. The hearing was scheduled more in the interest of expanding discussion of open-source alternatives, said a spokesperson for Sen. Bowen. California has already taken steps toward using such software throughout the state. In 2004, the California Performance Review strongly recommended the...

A FINNISH security expert has proved to the supervisor of elections in Leon County Florida that it is a doddle to hack Diebold voting machines. Harri Hursti took part in a fake election in Leon County using what Diebold calls unhackable technology. At the beginning of the test election the memory card programmed by Harri Hursti was inserted into an Optical Scan Diebold voting machine. Hursti had pre-loaded the memory card with plus and minus votes. The eight ballots were run through the optical scan machine. Correct results should have been: Yes:2 ; No:6 However, just as Hursti had planned,...

(Someone sent this to me via Email. Looked interesting). Protest of California Secretary of State: Decision To Hold A "No Hearing Hearing" On November 21, 2005, citizens may voice their concerns about what voting system will record their votes, but thanks to a decision by Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, there's absolutely no guarantee that anyone with the authority to certify voting systems in California will hear those voices. California law requires the Secretary of State to conduct a public hearing as a condition of certifying any voting systems in the state. The Secretary of State has scheduled a hearing...

On Election Day, will your vote be counted accurately? According to a CBS/New York Times poll, only 35 percent of people surveyed had “a lot” of confidence that their votes would be properly counted. Nationwide, a movement to reform election procedures and protect against electronic-vote tampering and other forms of voting fraud is gaining force. CityBeat interviewed San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre regarding complaints raised by local and national election-reform activists over alleged violations of election law in San Diego’s recent mayoral race. “I share some concerns about the integrity of the electoral system,” Aguirre said. In the course...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - California election officials have rejected an electronic voting machine by Diebold after tests revealed unacceptable levels of screen freezes and paper jams. Three counties already have purchased the TSX voting machine, which was found to have a failure rate of 10 percent. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said that was too high a risk and he notified company officials in a letter sent Wednesday. In a mock election held last week to test the 96 touch-screen machines, McPherson noted in the letter that his staff encountered "problems with paper jamming on the ... printer module," he said...

A study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that irregularities associated with electronic voting in this month's election may have awarded as much as 260,000 votes to President Bush in three Florida counties. The study, led by sociology Professor Michael Hout, found that e-voting increased Bush's advantage over Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties to a clearer margin of victory over the edge he held in the 2000 election against Vice President Al Gore. Depending on the method used in counting the votes, the researchers found that e-voting in the...

Numerous problems with electronic voting machines were reported around the country on Election Day and immediately afterward, but most election officials and experts say the great majority of the machines functioned as expected. Critics, however, continue to argue that the election did not prove that all is well. In fact, they say, few of the hardware and software weaknesses that make touchscreen machines unreliable and unprotected from hacking have been corrected. And the lack of a paper confirmation for each vote, they say, remains a major flaw in the machines used in most states. In fact, the lack of paper...

Like so many others here, I have been watching the post-election meltdown among the Democrats with fascination. Some of it I find understandable. I knew that when John Kerry decided in September to cease speaking to voters about who he is and what he planned to do as President -- not that he ever really discussed who he is -- and to instead pursue a strategy for victory that would rely upon raising public anger over Iraq, lost jobs, and whatever else the media produced for his benefit, that an election loss would be difficult for a group of supporters...

NEW YORK - Bev Harris, the Blackbox lady, was apparently quoted in a number of venues during the day Monday as having written “I was tipped off by a person very high up in TV that the news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2… My source said they’ve also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time.” I didn’t get the memo. We were able to put together a reasonably solid 15 minutes or so on the voting irregularities in Florida and...

Nader requests N.H. vote recount By KEVIN LANDRIGAN, Telegraph Staff landrigank@telegraph-nh.com Published: Saturday, Nov. 6, 2004 CONCORD - Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader requested a hand recount of ballots in New Hampshire after getting seven-tenths of 1 percent of the vote. “We have received reports of irregularities in the vote reported on the AccuVote Diebold Machines in comparison to exit polls and trends in voting in New Hampshire,’’ Nader wrote. “These irregularities favor President George W. Bush by 5 percent to 15 percent over what was expected. Problems in these electronic voting machines and optical scanners are being reported in...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said. Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct, Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch. State and county election officials did not immediately respond to requests by The Associated Press for more details about the voting system and its vendor,...

Yesterday my day started at 0600 hours. In my role as 'inspector' of a local polling place, I had five clerks to supervise in setting up the five electronic touch screen units we were going to use, and prepare for a 0700 hours opening of the poll to voters. Each of the clerks had received a three hour training course from staff of Registrar of Voters office, to acquaint them with their function election day. I formally opened the polling place at 0700 hours. All went well, as voters were processed - each received a plastic card which would activate...

Below is a group of articles discussing different aspects of the electronic voting; possible problems and possible solutions. The article was written at least a few month ago. It's not a reporting of the problems on November 2, 2004 (yet). Sorry, Your Vote Has Been: Lost, Hacked, Miscast, Recorded TwiceNew electronic voting machines are supposed to prevent another Election Day disaster, but these paperless PCs could make hanging chads seem like a minor nuisance.  A breakdown of 2004 voting machines by county, and a few hotspots to watch    http://www.popsci.com/popsci/lgimg/0,21039,748736,00.html[1] Maryland and Georgia use Diebold voting machines statewide that leave...

(COMPUTERWORLD) - Security experts are substantially more skeptical about e-voting than the public, but their greatest worry is system and programming errors, not malicious hacker attacks, according to a survey released this week by the Ponemon Institute. The study, conducted in July and early August, aimed to measure public opinion about electronic voting systems and then compare the results with those of security experts -- both IT pros and hackers. "The degree of difference was just startling," said Larry Ponemon, adjunct professor of ethics and privacy at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the independent institute bearing his name. The...

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...

The president of Diebold Election Systems pledged Wednesday to fix multiple problems plaguing its oldest touchscreen-voting customer on the West Coast. Officials in Alameda County, purchaser of a $12.7 million Diebold electronic-voting system in May 2002, reserved judgment on whether the McKinney, Texas, firm is capable of delivering on its promises. "I got the feeling very much that they were committed to making everything right. Of course, our goal is that the presidential election will run smoothly," said county voting Registrar Brad Clark. "We'll see how they follow through on our discussions." Diebold Election Systems President Bob Urosevich brushed aside...

It is now 10:30 pm, and I have been up since 5 a.m. this morning. Today, I served as an election judge in the primary election, and I am writing down my experience now, despite being extremely tired, as everything is fresh in my mind, and this was one of the most incredible days in my life. I first became embroiled in the current national debate on evoting security when Dan Wallach of Rice University and I, along with Computer Scientist Yoshi Kohno and my Ph.D. student Adam Stubblefield released a report analyzing the software in Diebold's Accuvote voting machines....

Bogdanoff certified as 12-vote winner A heated recount for a state House seat finally ended Monday night, but the six-day wait for a winner has reignited demands for assurances that electronic voting machines are accurate. Ellyn Bogdanoff's 12-vote victory margin over Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Mayor Oliver Parker ultimately held up in the House District 91 race, but controversy swirled after 137 voters in parts of Boca Raton and coastal Broward County went to the polls but didn't cast a vote for any candidate. State Rep. Joe Negron doesn't think that many people would go to the polls without voting. The result raises...

Despite the release of a comprehensive report on Wednesday that showed the Diebold touch-screen voting machines to be "at high risk of compromise," election officials in California say they have no plans to replace the machines before the upcoming gubernatorial election. The report (PDF), commissioned by the governor of Maryland after researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice University found that the Diebold software was badly written and full of serious security flaws, confirmed that Diebold's AccuVote-TS system "as implemented in policy, procedure and technology, is at high risk of compromise."

Three computer researchers from the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, with help from a computer scientist at Rice University, say they've uncovered vulnerabilities in the software purportedly used by Diebold Election Systems. As a result, one person can cast multiple votes, elections can be delayed, the anonymity of voters can be breached, and cast votes can be modified or even deleted, the researchers say. However, the code analyzed by the researchers could be up to a year old. The code included modifications through 2002, the researchers said in a statement. The code they analyzed was discovered on a...