Eureka CA, Diebold error resulted in 179 uncounted ballots. The Times-Standard reports the story of the “Humboldt Election Transparency Project”, similar to a post-election audit <read>
Premier Elections Solutions (formerly known as Diebold Election Systems, Inc.), seems to have known about the glitch at least since 2004.
The Transparency Project is not an ordinary audit, it is partially accomplished by the public:
Continue reading “Election “Audit” Discovers Diebold-Known Error”
Princeton Professor Andrew Appel hacks voting machine in 6 min and 51 sec for CNN host: <video>
Anyone familiar with Connecticut’s Diebold AccuVote-OS would be able to beat that 6 min and 51 sec, especially if they had a copy of one of the keys for the machine (hint they are all the same key, statewide, and worldwide) and spent a little time studying the art of defeating tamper evident seals.
Professor Appel correctly points out that having an optical scan system is much better because the paper can be recounted to verify the results. Regular readers of CTVotersCount know that Connecticut recounts by machine, which negates much of that benefit.
Editor’s Note: Posted Halloween 2009. Rush Holt has moved on from the House, yet we still face the danger of putting off needed reforms.
Like many voters, I am concerned about the integrity of this year’s election. Last night I was visited by three visions of elections future. From 2008, 2012 or 2016. I’m a little hazy on some of the details, but the visions were worse than anything yet imagined.
The Ghost Of Presidential Elections Future:
It seems the problems all stemmed from what happened in the 2008 election and its aftermath. Its a little hazy but the ghost warned of three possible outcomes:
Editor’s Note: Posted Halloween 2009. Rush Holt has moved on from the House, yet we still face the danger of putting off needed reforms.
Like many voters, I am concerned about the integrity of this year’s election. Last night I was visited by three visions of elections future. From 2008, 2012 or 2016. I’m a little hazy on some of the details, but the visions were worse than anything yet imagined.
The Ghost Of Presidential Elections Future:
It seems the problems all stemmed from what happened in the 2008 election and its aftermath. Its a little hazy but the ghost warned of three possible outcomes:
To paraphrase Walter Cronkite, “Nothing has changed, but your votes are not there”. The nightmare continued:
Beltway Lugosi Appears, The D.C. Goblin:
How could this have happened? Surely by 2012 or by 2016 we would have had election integrity.
At least in Connecticut, we can rest assured that our votes will count, with our nickname, “The Constitution State”. Even if the voters approve the ballot question in 2008 to have a Constitutional Convention, surely we can rely on our other nickname, “The Land of Steady Habits” to carry the day and eventually, some day, protect our votes. The nightmare continued:
The Devil Is Truly In The details:
Connecticut earns its nickname, “The Nutmeg State“. When it comes to post-election audit law, the “Devil” is truly in the details.
I am awake now. With hard work and some luck, the voters choices may be confirmed in the election results and the voters could awake after the election to stay eternally vigilant. Some may say that this is just a dream, but it is preferable to the alternative nightmare.
Verified Voting, Common Cause, and the Brennan Center for Justice released a major report today: <press release> <report>
Is America Ready to Vote? State Preparations for Voting Machine Problems in 2008
States Get Mixed Reviews on Readiness for Voting Machine Problems — Citing Improvements, Election Experts Call for Backup Measures to Secure the Vote on Nov 4th
From the Press Release:
With millions of Americans expected to confront an array of voting technologies on Nov. 4, today election administration experts from the Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause and Verified Voting issued a 50-state report card that grades each state on its preparedness
“There’s no question that in the last few years, election officials around the country have made dramatic improvements that will make it much less likely that voters are disenfranchised due to voting system failures,†said Lawrence Norden, director of the Voting Technology Project at the Brennan Center. “Unfortunately, there is still much work to be done to ensure that every voter will get to vote and every vote will be counted if something goes wrong with voting systems on Election Day,†he stated.
Is America Ready to Vote? evaluates each state by four criteria: procedures for issuing emergency paper ballots, reconciling ballot tallies, providing paper records of votes cast, and post-election audits. The report reveals a broad range of preparedness across the country to address Election Day voting system meltdowns.
How does Connecticut rate? Continue reading “Report: Is America Ready To Vote?”
Posted on October 11, UConn has a new report dated October 7th of the Pre-Election testing of memory cards for the August 2008 Primary, Pre-Election Audit of Memory Cards for the August 2008 Connecticut Primary Elections <read>
There was a different methodology used to gather cards for this report. Previous reports were of an incomplete selection of memory cards shipped to UConn by registrars — which should have been subject to pre-election testing before selection and shipping to UConn. Those reports demonstrated that many election officials failed to properly follow pre-election testing procedures. In addition there were questions about “junk” data cards that could not be read. This latest report avoids the embarrassing level of failure to follow procedures, while getting closer to the source of the “Junk” memory card problem — cards were shipped to UConn directly from the vendor, LHS:
Larger than acceptable number of cards contained what we describe as “junk†data. By saying that we understand that the card does not contain proper programming, and instead contains what appears to be random noise. When one puts the card containing the “junk†data into the AV-OS terminal it issues a prompt requesting to format the card. Thus such cards are easily detectable and cannot possibly be used in an election. It seems unlikely that these cards were (electromagnetically) damaged in shipping. Consequently, it appears that these cards were either not adequately tested by LHS Associates, or they experienced some kind of hardware/software failure at some point. Among the audited cards 5.4% of the cards contained junk data. This percentage is high and this issue has to be resolved in the future.…
We performed pre-election audit of cards for all districts, and in this sense it is a complete audit. However the cards do not contain the results of pre-election testing done by the districts, and they were not randomly selected by the districts for the purpose of the audit. Instead the cards were provided to us directly by LHS. The results of the audit would be strengthened if it covered also the pre-election testing done by the districts. Our previous memory card audits in fact included this. However, our forthcoming companion report (to be available at http://voter.engr.uconn.edu/voter/Reports.html) will document the results of the post-election audit, covering most of the districts, and containing the observations about the card usage in pre-election testing at districts and in the election itself.
This is a useful report as it gets closer to the source of memory card errors and is an example of UConn’s excellent work. We must also recognize that none of the memory card reports accomplished so far have really covered a complete and random selection of memory cards.
A full hour on voting integrity:
I especially recommend the 2nd segment with Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner. She demonstrates that while she has her hands full in Ohio, she understands the issues and has moved aggressively to improve voting integrity and voter access. She commissioned the Everest reports and has used them to the benefit of voters.
Greg Palast on Vote Rigging and Suppression Ahead of the 2008 Election <watch listen read>
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner on Voter Rights, Faulty Electronic Voting Machines, Voter Fraud and GOP Voter Challenges <watch Listen read>
Report: Voter Purging Process Is Shrouded in Secrecy, Prone to Error and Vulnerable to Manipulation <watch listen read>
The New York Times in an editorial, That’s a Pretty Big Glitch, nails the issue again <read>
In the early days of electronic voting, critics who warned that it was unreliable were dismissed as alarmist. Now it seems that hardly an election goes by without reports of serious vulnerabilities or malfunctions.
Unfortunately, for the most part, we are still being dismissed by many.
Computer scientists have shown that electronic voting machines are easy to hack. And voters report errors like vote flipping, in which the vote they cast for one candidate is recorded for another. Ohio’s secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, is suing Diebold over the vote-dropping and noted that its machines crashed repeatedly during last year’s voting in Cuyahoga County.
There is no time left between now and Election Day for states and localities to upgrade their machines or even to fix the vote-dropping software. All they can do is double-check their vote totals, audit their paper trails and be on the lookout for the next, as-yet-undiscovered computer glitch. After that, Congress must require that all states adopt voting systems that include voter-verifiable paper records for every electronic vote cast.
We keep making the case that recounting by machine is unreliable and not up to the demands of Democracy. Kim Zetter has a readable and detailed article describing the ups and downs of the recent Palm Beach recounts. We have always said that recounting by machine can cause the same errors, if any, to simply be repeated – but Palm Beach proves that new errors can occur as well. <read>
Officials expected the machines would reject the same ballots again. But that didn’t happen. During a first test of 160 ballots, the machines accepted three of them. In a second test of 102 ballots, the machines accepted 13 of them, and rejected the others. When the same ballots were run through the machines again, 90 of the ballots were accepted…
Continue reading “Graphic Demonstration: Problems With Machine Recounts”
The Providence Journal has the story of a very close primary in our neighboring state. There are some interesting lessons here. <read>
First there is a reason CTVotersCount wants manual hand-to-eye counts in close races, rather than reading the votes through a machine. Primarily (no pun intended) any machine errors will likely just be repeated. Also, CT like RI is a voters intent state – we count votes as the voter intended, not as the machine requires – so counting by hand in close races is the only way to really determine voters intent in races where the margin is very small. Lets not be like RI and depend on courts and candidates to do the right thing:
The amended court order mirrors one issued Wednesday in the case of a candidate for state Senate in Warwick, David Bennett, who lost his bid for a place on the November ballot to Erin Lynch in the Sept. 9 primary.
Both orders require the recounting of all provisional, mail and regular ballots cast. In addition, the court ordered the state Board of Elections to examine any ballots rejected by the optical scanning machines to determine which candidate, if any, the voters intended to choose but failed to mark the ballot correctly.
Actually the RI court should have gone further and ordered a full hand count — just because the machines read the ballots, it does not mean they read the voters intent accurately. Having observed 16 post-election audits in Connecticut, from first hand observation, I can attest that sometimes an optical scan ballot is such that the circle that is filled in is crossed out, but the machine cannot determine that. There is also the unlikely possibility that an optical scanner might just not work well. OK so its not so unlikely anymore, given recent tests in a real election in Washington, D. C.
Back to RI, it seems there was also a bit of voter fraud, with a good evidence trail. The only question remaining is, will it be prosecuted? Remember the Attorney General scandal? It was all about prosecuting non-existent voter fraud.
During a hearing involving the Alves protest, West Warwick’s deputy town clerk reported to the state Board of Elections that 13 Republicans had voted in the Democratic primary. Taveras reviewed each of the nearly 2,000 ballot applications, finding the signatures of two more Republicans who apparently voted. Taveras also told the board that there were three more Democratic ballots cast without corresponding ballot applications, creating a total of 18 questionable ballots.
In the Bennett hearing, Taveras said that his comparison of numbers from the Board of Elections and from the Warwick Board of Canvassers showed that 31 ballots were cast without signed application forms. He said that as many as 19 Republicans voted in that Democratic primary.
“This isn’t an isolated mistake,†Lynch, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, said. “There are [many] separate instances where Republicans signed for Democratic blue ballots and voted in the Democratic primary. That’s no mistake. 
However, Lynch said the law isn’t as lenient. Rhode Island law considers it a felony to vote in any election that an individual “knows or should know†that he or she is not eligible to vote.
“I think if you’re a registered Republican, you know enough not to vote in the Democratic primary,” he said. “I know enough not to vote in the Republican primary.”
******
Update 06/06/2009 Washington Post: Firm to Give D.C. Information About Its Voting Devices <read>
Sequoia agrees to hand over source code and documentation under rasonable terms. This should be the normal response to every voting discrepancy traced to a voting machine. It should not require going to court.
Sequoia Voting Systems agreed yesterday to turn over sensitive information to the D.C. Council about how the District’s voting machines work and tabulate results, setting the stage for one of the most comprehensive probes on the reliability of electronic voting equipment.
The agreement is a response to the election night chaos in the September primaries, when Sequoia machines tabulated more ballots than there were voters, resulting in thousands of phantom votes.
Electoral change advocates said the agreement, finalized yesterday in D.C. Superior Court after the city threatened a lawsuit, is one of the first times a manufacturer of electronic voting machines has been forced to endure a public vetting of how its equipment tabulates returns.
“It is certainly going to serve as a precedent not just for further investigations in the District of Columbia, but around the country,” said John Bonifaz, legal director for Voter Action, a national voting rights organization.
We have been covering a significant report by VotersUnite.org, Vendors are Undermining the Structure of U.S. Elections. , the report summarizes the bind Connecticut and other states are in:
Violations of Federal Law Leave States in a Double Bind. The federal government fails to meet its HAVA deadlines for giving guidance to the states on how to comply with HAVA, yet states are held accountable to comply.
News from Florida of our vendor, Diebold Premier continues to reveal the disappointing quality of their products and the Federal testing programs. From the Harold Tribune a short sour story <read>
Two Diebold glitches in one month? That’s no way to rebuild confidence in automated elections.
Sarasota and Hillsborough counties experienced one of the problems Tuesday night. They suffered delays from a software flaw that revealed itself when officials tried to integrate absentee ballot totals into overall election results…
The manufacturer is Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold — a name long connected to doubts about the security of voting.
Earlier this month, Premier accepted blame for the other glitch — a coding error that can sometimes prevent precinct vote totals from electronically transferring to central tabulation systems. The problem could afflict 34 states.
Good news, bad news
The good news about these flaws is that faulty counts can be detected by cross-checks and refuted by a paper trail of ballots. The votes still exist, in other words, though they can be harder to find.
The bad news is that confidence has been shaken, yet again, in automation that is critical to democratic elections. The extra vigilance required to thwart these potential glitches adds to election administrators’ burden and cost.
The fact that the Premier problems occur intermittently, undiscovered during certification or testing procedures, is especially troubling. In Sarasota County, for example, the high-speed scanner/software glitch did not surface in a mock election held last month…
Despite many reforms since the 2000 fiasco, voting systems are nowhere near as credible, secure or user-friendly as they should be.
Here is the good news and bad news for Connecticut:
The good news is that these latest glitches do not apply here because we total results manually from election night paper tapes, rather than accumulating memory cards.
The bad news is we are totally dependent on Premier and their distributor, LHS, for our elections – they are rightfully in the spotlight and being sued for poor quality and generally remain in denial. The lack of security and poor quality of the AccuVote-OS has been proven by independent scientific studies commissioned by CT, CA, and OH.
Moderate good news is that Connecticut has chosen optical scan which is the best system available which meets standards set by the Help America Vote Act.
The bad bad news is that there is no alternative in sight. All the vendors have poor products with no better products or vendors in sight. While some states are improving their laws, procedures, and actions, proposed Federal laws in the Senate would “fix” the Help America Vote Act by making the situation much worse.