What The Maryland Study On Diebold Voting Machines Didn't Tell You

from the now-you-can-find-out dept

Tue, Nov 7th 2006 10:12am — Mike Masnick

One of the issues concerning e-voting machines, and Diebold in particular, is how they've responded to all the criticism and vulnerabilities -- with the company often being accused of covering up, ignoring or denying the problems. Steven Zakulec writes to let us know that back in 2003, Maryland commissioned a study on the Diebold machines they'd just spent millions on, in response to the concerns originally raised by Prof. Avi Rubin. According to Steven: "Right from the beginning Diebold demanded two very broad concessions: no source code access, and they reserve the right to redact out any proprietary information." That seems like a pretty questionable demand, and one Diebold should have been in no position to make, considering the importance of truly independent investigation into the machines. The final "redacted" report came out weighing in at a lightweight 38 pages. Remember, Diebold was only supposed to redact proprietary info. Turns out that they found an awful lot of that. Someone high up has leaked the original documents which weighs in at 200 pages meaning that someone (most likely Diebold) was able to knock out 162 pages of info on vulnerabilities. The link above has the entire original document for downloading, and wonders how many of the many, many vulnerabilities discussed in the report were actually dealt with before the 2004 election and how many were dealt with before today's election. Chances are not that many.

In the meantime, if you're looking to feel confident about e-voting companies and their tech ability, Chief Elf writes in to let us know that he went to check out the company, Advanced Voting Systems, that built the e-voting system he used this morning, and found a nice big error message right on their home page. I just checked and it was still there, but in case they fix it, here's a screenshot. It's tough to trust these companies to build competent voting machines when they can't even correct database/PHP errors on their own website on election day.

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31 Comments

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Matt, 7 Nov 2006 @ 11:28am

Maryland, such a wonderful place
I thought that I could make sure my vote was counted by voting by Absentee (paper) ballot.

Guess what? Diebold prints the paper ballots, and supplies the optical scanners that read them too!

I want to see someone appoint an independant prosecutor!
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SPR, 7 Nov 2006 @ 11:44am

Voting machine fraud
The government has the ability and resources to design and build voting machines that should be able to be fraud proof. Why are we as a country relying on some company with questionable political connections and even more questionable ethics to do this? Why are we trusting them at all when they are subject to being influenced by a dictatorial individual that is a known supporter of terrorist entities that have vowed to destroy us?
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Geren, 7 Nov 2006 @ 11:48am

No Such Thing ....
Complain all you want. Just bear in mind that there is no perfect system!
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Steve, 7 Nov 2006 @ 11:56am

Diebold voting machines
#3 Electronic voting machines have to be perfect and if they are not, they should not be used! I do not want my one vote not to be counted. I am an American and I believe in our system of checks and balances. Lately, we have not had either.
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pist, 7 Nov 2006 @ 11:59am

Re: No Such Thing ....
I'm not looking for perfection, just ethics, credibility and the ability to feel confident my vote counts.

And dammit, I will complain because if one doesn't, nothing will even begin to change. This isn't rocket science for cripes sake ... we're counting votes, not sending men to mars.
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pist, 7 Nov 2006 @ 12:10pm

Re: Maryland, such a wonderful place
Two words: Paper trail ...
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Too much compaining..., 7 Nov 2006 @ 12:12pm

Shut up and go vote
#2 If you don't trust a private company that has connections to a certain political party, why would you trust the political party itself to build the machines. By the way, since when did "let the government do it" become an acceptable solution. A government designed/built voting machine would cost 10 times as much and take 3 times as long to roll out. Not to mention using private companies helps the economy. The particular company picked may not the the ideal choise ( I really don't know) but going private is far better than asking the government to do it. As fo your last comment, that is just plain idiotic.

#4 I don't think #3 was refering only to electronic voting machines: "no perfect system" rather any voting method. Paper ballots will have all sorts chad issues. Any method you select, regardless of how you feel about our system of checks and balances, is going to have flaws.

#5 So far complaining has done nothing to change anything, never has either. Come up with a solution and do something or quit complaining. Things change because action is taken, not because someone complains.

Now everybody shut up and go vote...
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Dave, 7 Nov 2006 @ 12:15pm

Geren, you're right.
But my bank trusts my ATM, and I trust it because it generates a paper receipt. If I deposit a check and the bank says I didn't, I can bring in the receipt and say, "yes, I did". If they refuse to honor it, I can call the cops, or the newspapers or just tell everyone I know.
I know that.
The bank knows that.
The ATM company knows that. (they also know that the bank will make their lives difficult, if I make the bank's life difficult.)
So the ATM folks make verifiable ATMs that work right. I trust the bank and the bank trusts me. Mostly.

It ain't perfect, but it's pretty good.

Some of the voting machines we're using in this election would have to be improved a lot to make it up to 'unacceptable'.

That's my two cents, anyway.
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SPR, 7 Nov 2006 @ 12:21pm

Re: Shut up and go vote
"#2 If you don't trust a private company that has connections to a certain political party, why would you trust the political party itself..."
Where have you been hiding??!! The "private company with political connections" is NOT connected to a political party but is "Diebold" tied to Hugo Chavez of Venezeula. He has bought a significant interest in the company that is manufacturing our voting machines!!! Why is that they can't produce a machine using technology that is able to do a simple head count? it's not like it's a complicated problem!! After all, how many ways can you count YES/NO answers??
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Chief Show Officer, 7 Nov 2006 @ 12:21pm

Advanced Voting Systems
Even without the home page error I would be hesitant to trust a tech company with a website that looks like theirs. It looks like it was designed (and I use that term loosely) 15 years ago by an eighth grader.
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SPR, 7 Nov 2006 @ 12:24pm

Re: Advanced Voting Systems
Designed by an eighth grader?? You are being more generous than I would have been!!
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Go figure, 7 Nov 2006 @ 12:31pm

Complaining
Actually, complaining is the ONLY thing that prompts actions by the government, so we should do plenty of it if we want anything to change. What do you want, everyone to go invent a better voting machine instead of complaining? Get real!

Diebold is a highly suspicious company for many reasons, soem of them related ot the CEO's politics and statements he's made, an dsome of them purely greedy busienss decisions to squash legitimate concerns. We don't use Diebold machines in Arlington County where i live. And if we did, you had better believe I would complain!
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zcat, 7 Nov 2006 @ 12:41pm

AVS website
That's not the half of it. The page can't decide if it's in utf-8 (HTTP header) or iso-8859-1 ( element). In fact it appears to be Windows-1250 which is neither.

It's certainly not xhtml either; not even close!
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jeadly, 7 Nov 2006 @ 12:48pm

Re: Maryland, such a wonderful place
I was looking over the MD voting site today and found this section on voting procedure. The "live demo" link is to a dead page, that really instills some confidence in me guys.

Luckily I'll be using a provisional ballot (paper) at my poll today because the voter roles are out of date...
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Nov 2006 @ 12:49pm

Dem mak gud inner web pag
Dem mak gud inner web pag
U no cumplane
U vot now puny mortel!
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derrick, 7 Nov 2006 @ 12:59pm

ATMs
#8 - You know that quite a few ATM's are made by Diebold too right?

Makes you wonder how come those voting machines really don't print out a receipt.
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Brian, 7 Nov 2006 @ 1:06pm

Looks like that website doesn't have any info on it after the 2004 copyright notice. The lead on the news section is dated 2002.
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Matt, 7 Nov 2006 @ 1:06pm

Re: Re: Maryland, such a wonderful place
Unfortunately, Diebold is counting the paper too!
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Nov 2006 @ 1:27pm

no one said this yet?
All your Votes are belong to US!
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Christian Romney, 7 Nov 2006 @ 1:36pm

Voting systems
I once read an interesting account of the system used to elect the Pope. The analysis was done by Bruce Schneier, who really needs no introduction. Read the account here: http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0504.html
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Nov 2006 @ 1:57pm

Re: Geren, you're right.
If they refuse to honor it, I can call the cops, or the newspapers or just tell everyone I know.
Good luck with that. If you call the cops they will probably throw _you_ in jail for harassing the bank. If you publicly bad mouth the bank they can just sue you into oblivion.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Nov 2006 @ 1:59pm

Re: Advanced Voting Systems
Even without the home page error I would be hesitant to trust a tech company with a website that looks like theirs. It looks like it was designed (and I use that term loosely) 15 years ago by an eighth grader.
Hey, if an eighth grader can design a voting machine surely they can design a website.
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Egat, 7 Nov 2006 @ 2:11pm

Re: Re: Shut up and go vote
Any electronic system that is required to solve a problem with 100% accuracy is INHERENTLY complicated. Even if the problem was only to count the number of times a button was pressed.

Accurately counting votes for items on a ballot, while only allowing a person to vote once, geting the data to a central location and reporting results is quite a bit more complicated that it sounds. Doesn't matter if your solution is paper or electronic.

However, that is an even greater reason to have these machines be open to outside inspection, source code, schematics, everything. That is the only way we can be confidant the problem has been solved in a satisfactory manner.
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Charles Griswold, 7 Nov 2006 @ 3:35pm

Re: No Such Thing ....
"Complain all you want. Just bear in mind that there is no perfect system!"

Nice attitude. We had a working but non-perfect voting system that used paper, and they want to replace it with a totally broken system using buggy and easily-hacked voting machines, but that's OK because no system is perfect.

I know, let's replace our government with an autocratic dictatorship. Hey, no government is perfect. Let's replace our paper money with large wooden planks. After all, no monetary system is perfect. Let's replace the internet with semaphore towers. After all, there is no such thing as a perfect information network, right?

Good grief, man, next time you post why don't you pull your head out first?
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Stu, 7 Nov 2006 @ 3:55pm

Right on Charles!
I fell out of my chair laughing at your post-
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just me, 7 Nov 2006 @ 3:56pm

voting machines
I believe our rights are being violated. We have the right to vote, and have our vote counted. Anything less, is a violation. We should be able to take them to Court, and Ram their voting machines where the sun don't shine. If we are refused, then the public will know our rights don't count. As a Nation, someone should be able to tell us what our next recourse shall be. Granted many will be pissed, but this needs to be cleaned up now. Before you know it, More will win elections, and they will have not of earned the public vote. Our Election Process will be a joke for other Nations to be humored by. We already look bad in some areas. No need to be called the worst Nation out of all of the developed Countries.
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ebrke, 8 Nov 2006 @ 8:28am

Funny or not?
Well, 24 hours later that webpage still shows an error. Guess they are too busy with voting software issues to pay any attention to their webpage.
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nipsey russell, 8 Nov 2006 @ 9:19am

#16 - the reason that you cant get a reciept from a voting machine is so that people cant sell their votes, or get bullied into a certain vote. If you have proof of who you voted for, then the "buyer" or "bully" can demand to see this after you vote...
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Jessica J., 8 Nov 2006 @ 3:17pm

Just a quirky tangent observation...
Maybe I am a snob when it comes to what graphics these bigger companies place on their web sites...but I consider a company's layout and content to be a direct reflection of what kind of people are involved with the company being promoted over the web.

While looking at the screen shot you offered, on the left side is a graphic of an eagle with an "imprint" of an American flag over its eye. That graphic is offered on a multitude of free clip art web sites...

They couldn't afford to hire someone to design custom graphics for their site?

Again, just a quirky tangent...
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Dane, 9 Nov 2006 @ 12:03am

Re: Just a quirky tangent observation...
I'm not sure how you can have much faith in a company that can't spell it's own name or address properly (Company name: Adavanced? & Address: Boulavard?) on the Investor page. Overall the whole site looks like someone in accounting whipped it up to save money on a real designer... and they got their money's worth. :P
No offence to accountants.
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D, 10 Nov 2006 @ 11:19am

Re: Re: Shut up and go vote
Actually, Diebold was not the company with Hugo Chavez ties. That company was Sequoia Voting Systems. Additionally, most Diebold machines have been modified to produce a paper trail. And yes, they do make optical scanners. However, the machine that was used to make the paper/absentee ballots was made by Ricoh. And when localities go outside of themselves, they normally use a printing press company anyway with strong ties to the community.

Also, I have a problem with paper ballots. Though electronic machines may be vulnerable at times to inside tampering, at least they are not prone to being thrown away (see numerous Chicago and San Fran elections where paper ballots were found at the bottom of the lake or bay). The fact is, there is no perfect system.

Oh, my knowledge is because I worked for a locality as an independent consultant.
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