Friday, October 31, 2008
machines are insecure and vulnerable
shape-shifting electronic votes are more than fantasy, according to reports from states including West Virginia, Missouri, Nevada, Georgia and Colorado. Whether by accident or design, touch-screen voting machines have "flipped" votes from a caster's chosen candidate to one he opposes.
Unlike the old days when campaigners hung around street corners haranguing voters with handouts and pints of beer, the electronic era presents a sophisticated challenge to democracy.
Now, says Crispin Miller, author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and Subversion of Democracy 2000-2008, changes can occur seamlessly, without a breath of suspicion. Electronic glitches are only one of a range of mishaps, mistakes and dirty tricks that may decide outcome on Nov. 4.
Complaints about the electronic machines have mounted, along with calls for a return to paper ballots, like Canada's.
"More traditional systems are better," says Jeremy Epstein, a technological security expert and member of two Virginia legislative commissions that studied voting machines. "Paper-based and hand-counted ballots are fast, accurate and cheap. Studies show that machines are insecure and vulnerable to attack."
Fraud fears grow as [US] voters throng polls - The Toronto Star - October 21, 2008
(The article title is not great, something like "voting machine errors and voting surpression plague election" might have been closer to the mark.)
Labels: election, electronic voting, usa
Thursday, October 30, 2008
optical scan to dominate 2008 US election
Election Data Services provides the US November 2008 voting equipment composition (I'm tempted to say "breakdown").
I should mention that they use some confusing terminology.
To me electronic voting covers optical scan, DRE and Internet voting.
They consider electronic voting to cover only DRE (usually touchscreen) machines.
An optical mark-sense reader is an electronic device just like a touchscreen machine. It uses optical sensors to read a dot on paper, rather than to record a fingerprint. It is subject to most of the kinds of attacks that a touchscreen suffers from: you can compromise the software/firmware, there may be errors in the software/firmware, the optical sensors may be mis-aligned or malfunctioning, the paper path may jam, the power can fail, etc.
As well, if you record the order in which voters submit their ballots for scanning, you can reverse this to determine exactly who voted for whom, by going down the stack of ballots - once again the secret ballot is compromised.
It is true that IF AN ERROR IS DETECTED or IF A RECOUNT IS MANDATED, you can then hand-count the ballots (albeit going slightly crosseyed staring at tiny circles for hours).
Of course if you were a clever hacker, you would just program the scanner to distort the election by a margin smaller than that which would trigger any investigation. A similarly small error would also not be detected.
NOTE: some kind of rendering bug puts this table far down on the page.
from 2008 Voting Equipment Study (PDF)
According to votingmachines.procon.org the numbers previously were
2004: 1% paper, 35% optical scan, 29.5% DRE
2000: 1.5% paper, 29.5% optical scan, 12.5% DRE
I should mention that they use some confusing terminology.
To me electronic voting covers optical scan, DRE and Internet voting.
They consider electronic voting to cover only DRE (usually touchscreen) machines.
An optical mark-sense reader is an electronic device just like a touchscreen machine. It uses optical sensors to read a dot on paper, rather than to record a fingerprint. It is subject to most of the kinds of attacks that a touchscreen suffers from: you can compromise the software/firmware, there may be errors in the software/firmware, the optical sensors may be mis-aligned or malfunctioning, the paper path may jam, the power can fail, etc.
As well, if you record the order in which voters submit their ballots for scanning, you can reverse this to determine exactly who voted for whom, by going down the stack of ballots - once again the secret ballot is compromised.
It is true that IF AN ERROR IS DETECTED or IF A RECOUNT IS MANDATED, you can then hand-count the ballots (albeit going slightly crosseyed staring at tiny circles for hours).
Of course if you were a clever hacker, you would just program the scanner to distort the election by a margin smaller than that which would trigger any investigation. A similarly small error would also not be detected.
NOTE: some kind of rendering bug puts this table far down on the page.
| Type | % Registered Voters |
|---|---|
| Punch Cards | 0.10 |
| Lever Machines | 6.72 |
| Hand-Counted Paper Ballots | 0.17 |
| Optically-Scanned Paper Ballots | 56.17 |
| Electronic (DRE / Touchscreen) Systems | 32.63 |
| Mixed | 4.22 |
from 2008 Voting Equipment Study (PDF)
According to votingmachines.procon.org the numbers previously were
2004: 1% paper, 35% optical scan, 29.5% DRE
2000: 1.5% paper, 29.5% optical scan, 12.5% DRE
Labels: election, electronic voting, usa
