Category: Electronic Vulnerability

Feinstein to Voters: Waste $, jeopardize Democracy.

Update: Take Action: E-Mail our Senators to oppose S. 3212 <read and send> This is especially important because Senator Dodd is on the committee and the hearing is this week!

The well intentioned but flawed 2002 Help America Vote Act launched the large scale move to electronic voting. Many states have paperless DREs (Touch Screens), some have paper trails of questionable value, and others like Connecticut have true paper ballots with inadequate chain-of-custody and inadequate post-election audits. What could possibly make things worse? The answer is the latest bill from the U.S. Senate, the folks who brought us HAVA. The bill, S. 3212, would add costs and subtract safety

As we stated when the bill was outlined by Senators Feinstein and Bennett, the primary minor benefit of the bill would be to unite voting integrity advocates in opposition. Our friends at Verified Voting have produced an analysis of the bill <read>

A number of troubling provisions require us to urge opposition to S. 3212:

1. S.3212 allows “independent” vote records that would exist only in computer memory to be used to verify electronic vote totals.

2. The non-paper verification methods allowed by S. 3212 would increase the costs and burdens of conducting elections without the benefit of increased confidence and auditability.

3. Language in the bill would exempt from any verification requirement those paperless voting systems purchased before January 1, 2009 to meet HAVA’s accessibility requirements. This would leave millions of voters (particularly those with disabilities) dependent on insecure paperless electronic machines for the foreseeable future.
Continue reading “Feinstein to Voters: Waste $, jeopardize Democracy.”

Testing/Inspecting For Democracy Is Too Much Work

Why bother inspecting restaurants, bridges, trucks, and voting machines? It is just too difficult and costly.

While Connecticut is way behind in inspecting restaurants as we have been with bridges and trucks, we fit right into the trend evidenced by two national stories – the Election Assistance Commission finds its just too hard on vendors to insist that voting machines actually be certified – and in New York we find that half of the voting machines delivered by Sequoia do not work.

As summarized by John Gideon <read>

The Board of Advisors is advising [PDF, pg 7] the EAC, via resolution, that they need to speed-up the certification process for voting systems. They want the system to be what it was under the old, rubber-stamp system headed by the National Association of State Elections Directors (NASED). They want the same system of testing and certification that has resulted in our voting systems failing in many elections and not even being compliant with federal standards.

Incredibly, the Board’s recommendation to the EAC goes so far as to admit that a failed “common practice” of the past should, apparently, be re-instituted under the newer certification system. “The common practice since the introduction of electronic voting systems,” they wrote, “has been to make hardware and software upgrades based on issues found in the most recent election in sufficient time to improve the voting systems for the next general election.”

Douglas Kellner as quoted by Kim Zetter of Wired on Sequoia in NY <read>

Douglas Kellner, co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, expressed frustration with the vendor, saying it appeared that Sequoia was using the state’s acceptance testing process to find problems with its machines in lieu of a sound quality-control process.

“There’s no way the vendor could be adequately reviewing the machines and having so many problems,” he told Threat Level. “What it tells us is that the vendor just throws this stuff over the transom and does not do any alpha- or beta-testing of their own before they apply for certification testing. Then they expect that we’ll identify technical glitches and then they’ll correct those glitches. But correction of those glitches is an extraordinarily time-consuming process. And its very disappointing that this equipment is not ready for prime time.”

But New York has nothing on the Nutmeg State where UConn tests reveal that less than half of our election officials faithfully follow pre-election testing procedures. As for the restaurants it seems Connecticut occasionally still inspects them, but nowhere near as often as required by our own laws.

French Study: More Errors With Electronic Voting

ComputerWorld article on French study <read>

There were discrepancies between the number of signatures and the number of votes at around 29.8% of polling stations studied using electronic voting machines, compared with just 5.3% of those using paper ballots, and those discrepancies were larger in the stations using voting machines, Enguehard found. It’s unlikely that voters’ unfamiliarity with the machines is to blame, for two reasons, said Enguehard. The ratio of discrepancies between electronic and traditional stations got worse, rather than better, with time, and there was no correlation between the bureaus with discrepancies and the bureaus that received the most complaints about difficulties with the voting machines.

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Truth Under Assault In Texas Hearing

Since its release last August we have covered the California Top-To-Bottom Review and its implications for Connecticut <here> <here> <here> it is an outstanding collection of reports based on research and evidence. It helped earn a deserved “Profile In Courage” award to its sponsor, Debra Bowen, Secretary of State of California.

How far will those patriotic voting machine vendors go to stretch the truth? How far to discredit a report demonstrating massive flaws in their voting systems? We have the answer. It seems that they stretch it beyond the breaking point. Dan Wallach was testifying last week about the California Top-To-Bottom Review to the Texas Legislature. <read his report>

Wow, was I disappointed. Here’s a quote from Peter Lichtenheld, speaking on behalf of Hart InterCivic:

Security reviews of the Hart system as tested in California, Colorado, and Ohio were conducted by people who were given unfettered access to code, equipment, tools and time and they had no threat model. While this may provide some information about system architecture in a way that casts light on questions of security, it should not be mistaken for a realistic approximation of what happens in an election environment. In a realistic election environment, the technology is enhanced by elections professionals and procedures, and those professionals safeguard equipment and passwords, and physical barriers are there to inhibit tampering. Additionally, jurisdiction ballot count, audit, and reconciliation processes safeguard against voter fraud.

..Did our work cast light on questions of security? Our work found a wide variety of flaws, most notably the possibility of  “viral” attacks, where a single corrupted voting machine could spread that corruption, as part of regular processes and procedures, to every other voting system. In effect, one attacker, corrupting one machine, could arrange for every voting system in the county to be corrupt in the subsequent election…

Were we given unfettered access? The big difference between what we had and what an attacker might have is that we had some (but not nearly all) source code to the system. An attacker who arranged for some equipment to “fall off the back of a truck” would be able to extract all of the software, in binary form, and then would need to go through a tedious process of reverse engineering before reaching parity with the access we had. The lack of source code has demonstrably failed to do much to slow down attackers who find holes in other commercial software products. Debugging and decompilation tools are really quite sophisticated these days. All this means is that an attacker would need additional time to do the same work that we did.

Did we have a threat model? Absolutely! See chapter three of our report, conveniently titled “Threat Model.”  The different teams working on the top to bottom report collaborated together to draft this chapter. It talks about attackers’ goals, levels of access, and different variations on how sophisticated an attacker might be. It is hard to accept that the vendors can get away with claiming that the reports did not have a threat model, when a simple check of the table of contents of the reports disproves their claim.

John Gideon Leaves It To Us

We get a healthy dose of news from John Gideon at VotersUnite.org and his Daily Voting News. Today he highlights the difference between a legislator and the Secretary of State in Colorado: <read>

The state Senate Majority Leader is quoted as saying this about the election integrity community, “I believe the group has gotten larger. It’s become more mainstream and people are paying more attention to them. They are an entity that’s at the table and has a voice that is listened to”. Meanwhile the Secretary of State told the newspaper, ““I think they have a fundamental belief that anything electronic, as it relates to voting, is evil and undermines our political system. They live in a world of conspiracy theories and are highly motivated. No matter what I do, so long as it leaves some form of electronic voting intact, it will be wrong by their standards”. I’ll leave it to the reader to make up their mind who is correct….

Answer below.

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Lou Dobbs Segment On NJ Ruling And E-Voting

On the occasion of the NJ ruling yesterday, Lou Dobbs interviewed the lawyer involved, Penny Venetis, and two voting advocates, David Dill and John Bonifaz. Full transcript <read>

Voting segment:

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A victory for voters. In Trenton, New Jersey, today, a court ruled that accuracy tests on paperless, electronic voting machines can be made public. The voting machine company, Sequoia, argued the information was a trade secret.

PENNY VENETIS, ATTORNEY: The courts had to step in to say it’s time now to examine the voting machines to determine whether or not they count votes accurately.

PILGRIM: After repeated electronic voting failures, 28 states are returning to paper ballots, according to an activist group who wants a return to paper ballots. According to that group, in this year’s presidential election, 61 percent of voters will be using paper ballot systems, up from 35 percent in 2004. But close to 20 states are still using electronic voting machines without a paper trail for the upcoming presidential election. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado are potential trouble spots. One of the most problem states has switched back to paper ballots.

DAVID DILL, VERIFIED VOTING.ORG: For the longest time, Florida was dominated by electronic voting, but they made a sudden transition last year when they passed a law requiring paper ballots and it’s going to be a big success story. I think that Florida is likely not to be the embarrassment of the 2008 election.

PILGRIM: The system of choice these days, optical scan machines, a paper ballot is scanned by an electronic device and then kept in case a recount is needed.

JOHN BONIFAZ, VOTERACTION.ORG: Only a paper ballot based system will give people the confidence there is transparency and accountability with the process and that the process can be recounted or audited, which is critical for ensuring the integrity of the elections.

PILGRIM: Repeated tests by prominent universities has shown machines without a paper trail cannot be counted accurately.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Now, while this is a victory in New Jersey today, and the public will have access to the accuracy testing of voting machines, New Jersey will not have paper ballots in time for the upcoming presidential election — Lou.

DOBBS: Well, I think we’ve also got to remind everybody that, when we saw the fellow looking at the ballot, that was a paper ballot.

PILGRIM: That was.

DOBBS: Causing all that trouble in Florida.

PILGRIM: That was a bad paper ballot and then they went to electronic because of that and that’s when they had even more trouble.

DOBBS: Well, it’s — seems like there is just a lot of trouble when it comes to figuring out how to cast a ballot in some quarters of Florida and other states. We hope that that won’t be a problem this year. Thank you very much, Kitty Pilgrim.

Well, the backlash against those e-voting machines has prompted some states such as Tennessee to pass laws requiring a paper trail for any type of voting. Unfortunately, Tennessee along with New York and Maryland won’t have the paper ballots either. Not until after the 2008 presidential election. In the swing state of Pennsylvania, as Kitty just reported, most of the machines are electronic and have no paper trail.

Democracy Too Important To Hide Under Trade Secrets

N.J. Star-Ledger, Judge rules public can see voting machine test results, <read>

A Superior Court judge in Trenton today agreed to overturn her ruling barring computer experts from publicizing test results of electronic voting machines.

The move was a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union and New Jersey media organizations that argued the public should be privy to the results before the presidential election.

“This is a historic moment. This is the first time a court has recognized the public’s right to examine voting computers,” said Penny Venetis, a professor at Rutgers Law Clinic who is representing the plaintiffs.

What Does It Take To Get A Voting Machine Federally Certified?

Not Much <read the whole story>

Last February, SysTest labs wrote its certification test report for a new voting system manufactured by Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold). The report listed the 79 problems the lab found during testing. Even so, SysTest recommended the system be certified by the EAC.

As we have pointed out, apparently we don’t take voting machines seriously. We take gambling machines and electric meters seriously. And hold gas companies to higher standards than Diebold.

Risks Continue For 2008 – Myths Have Not Been Repealed Nor Refuted

Note: A post by Jon Kantrowitz on MLM prompted this response.

There is no reason to be comfortable. The “Ten Myths In The Nutmeg State” have not been repealed.

I have the greatest respect for the computer scientists mentioned in the article, their research, and their contributions. We also need many more election officials as conscientious Ion Sancho. He is one of the stars of “Hacking Democracy” and a tireless advocate <video>

To their ranks I would add Dr. Alexander Shvartsman of the UConn VoTeR Center. He and his team have had papers selected for the ACCURATE conference this year and last <read> <read>.

Where I diverge from the article is in its conclusion:

thanks to this team of computer scientists and their partners in the public sector, communities across the country will be better prepared to prevent malicious attacks and mishaps at the ballot box.

This is true but to a very limited extent because so few states have used the well known and not so well known available information about voting risks to take action to protect our votes.

In Connecticut:
Continue reading “Risks Continue For 2008 – Myths Have Not Been Repealed Nor Refuted”

CTVotersCount Visits the UConn VoTeR Center

On June 4th we visited Dr. Alex Shvartsman and his team at the UConn VoTeR Center, toured the lab, and observed the testing of memory cards and the Diebold AccuVote-OS. Dr. Shvartsman and some of the staff

We have applauded the VoTeR Center’s academic work on evaluating the security of the AccuVote-OS and other voting machines <read> <read> along with their programs to independently inspect memory cards. <read> <read>. We have have also highlighted the Center’s post-election audit reports with some criticism based not on UConn’s work but on the lack of our confidence in the integrity of the data provided <read>

UConn’s reports on Diebold vulnerabilities complemented those of other researchers around the country, confirming the same vulnerabilities and adding additional vulnerabilities. The computer program to independently test memory cards represents excellent work. We are aware of no other researchers and no others state with a similar capability. This makes possible the unique program in Connecticut to test memory cards. We would like to see the program expanded to pre-test 100% of our memory cards before each election prior to delivery to election officials. The testing continues to highlight quality control problems in the programming of the cards by LHS Associates, and the failure of election officials to rigorously follow pre-election testing procedures.

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