Hackable Irish E-Voting Machines That Cost 54 Million Euros Sold For Scrap: 9 Euros A Piece
from the buy-high,-sell-low dept
For years, we've been pointing out the massive problems of e-voting, and governments' general blindness to the security risks. Of course, beyond the basic fear of fraud, there should have also been concerns about wasting taxpayer money. Apparently those concerns didn't amount to much in Ireland. As Slashdot highlights, Ireland spent €54 million on 7,500 e-voting machines. However, after realizing that there was no way to secure them from being hacked, the government has sold them off for scrap for a grand total of €70,000, or approximately €9 per machine. On the bright side, at least they weren't completely worthless...
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: e-voting, ireland, voting machines
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Up for auction one hackable voting machine, like new condition.
Tired of not being picked as captain of the team? Use this machine to guarantee victory.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Somehow I smell a cover-up here. If the systems are not fit for purpose and aren't being used any more, I can see no security reason.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Secret systems with no external review are always a bad idea. I am reminded of all of the lawsuits over breathalyzer source code, and a recent court ruling that even if they can sometimes be flawed they stand as being accurate.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
For everythng else, there's Masnickcard(TM)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
At least they'll be assured that it won't be hacked or the data transfer will not be tampered by any means...
Oh well... I just hope they learn from their mistake.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Look at Diebold in the US, with owners who have a history of supporting republican candidates financially, and who threaten to sue anyone (even college professors) who dares even hint they want to view the software of their voting machines to make sure they're 100% accurate.
That created a lot of internet conspiracies around 2004 that they stole the election for Bush. That kind of a suspicion isn't healthy for a democracy, it helps de-legitimize whoever's in power, and makes it harder for them to get things done.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
We have Team A and B.
Team A want's to fuck us over with a sandpaper wrapped dildo dipped in hot sauce.
Team B want's to do the same but scratch our assholes up with a Brillo pad then dip their shit in Turpentine before they rape us.
Choices choices!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
The US will buy these Irish voting machines at low prices and put them to use in our elections. Think of how much money this would save the US taxpayers!
All these machines need is some dusting off with a damp cloth, a ROM upgrade, and a network connection and everything will be just great.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Is it that you support and prefer vote fraud?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
That way more and better "quality assurance" can be uploaded into the voting machines right before, or even during an election.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
this probably isn't it.
oh well.
(though there's talk of setting up ONLINE voting at some point... because THAT'S not open to rampant abuse :-S)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
E-Voting Machines
So given all that, if your Governtment doesn't do the research about it first, tampering can happen. Even in Ohio, it's still printed on paper. The point in the machines my state uses is that it allows you understand what you are doing and crwates an overall better way to interface with the voting machine. Some states still use scantron sheets to vote...which are a lot easier to tamper with.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: E-Voting Machines
* The point in the machines my state uses is that it allows you understand what you are doing and creates an overall better way to interface with the voting machine.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Example one of hundreds:
Ohio Voting Machines Contained Programming Error That Dropped Votes http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/08/ohio-voting-machines-contained.html
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
1. You sign your name in on a physical piece of paper with photo ID in hand.
2. Someone takes you to your booth and the machine logs in with the key fob in place, the helper enters your registry ID code which is unique and changes every time there is a vote going on.
3. Following directions the directions on the voting machines here in Ohio are actually quite clear on how to work them at the voter level.
4. Even if there is a dropped vote count on the machine, the QR print is still available to use and that's how Ohio votes are counted, QR scanning.
Not to say the machines themselves are infallible, but the specific ones from my district tend to have a redundant backup of your vote.
Now, my district got our E-Voters back in 2007, the article you mentions the problem only pertains to machines manufactured 10 years ago. The manufacturers acknowledged that there WAS a problem, but that doesn't mean they didn't fix it when the problem was discovered by them independently, they just publicly announced it after being enquired about it.
The article states "The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly," which means it affected those districts who failed to properly maintain the machines. It was a Softwear error yes, but note it says it happened when in transit.
It also states "Riggall said he was "confident" that elections officials through the years would have realized votes had been dropped when they crosschecked their tallies to certify final elections results and would have reloaded cards so as not to lose votes. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has said no Ohio votes were lost because the nine Ohio counties that found the problem caught it before primary results were finalized." This means they had caught the problem, notified the right people for the correction, and everything was saved.
Now it also states that the memory cards being used had to be put into our counter one at a time, larger districts wanted to rush things apparently otherwise we wouldn't be in this mess. So what seems to be a software issue, looks more like a rush job gone bad.
Long story short: due to human error and not following instructions, there was a giant mess. The vote counters were not uploading the votes one at a time into the system, which as you know, can cause data errors. Unlike Ireland, we double-checked each vote in my district and everything turned out ok.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Hey its because of 'terrorism' we..erm...we have to suspend elections for a day...or a week or thirty years....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
simple code
do
if vote=person1 then votes_for_person1=votes_for_person1+1
if vote=person2 then votes_for_person2=votes_for_person2+1
if vote=person3 then votes_for_person3=votes_for_person3+1
until time=midnight
[ link to this | view in thread ]
the code required is simple and straightforward.
code doesn't become "distracted" by women with enormous boobs and count the wrong voter, or decide you probably meant to vote for the guy with the nicest smile....it just does whatever is programmed for that selection.
any system that doesn't count every single vote 100% of the time with a failure rate of 0% has to be deliberately designed that way.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
QA testing cannot provide that kind of assurance.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
is just untrue. A voting machine's software is nontrivial and any experienced developer will assure you that every nontrivial program (and many trivial ones) have bugs.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
First Hand Experience
My mom was a district court judge in 1999. In 2000, she had to run for election (she was appointed to fill a vacant term by the governor.) As a friend of the outgoing probate judge - who tallied all the votes from the machines in an excel spreadsheet on his personal laptop (not even kidding) - she was able to get him to show her the exact voting results, precinct-by-precinct when she lost by only 0.4% of the vote. The results are frightening.
According to both state and federal election law, if a ballot is marked with a straight party vote at the top - for example, Republican or Democrat - and then the voter checks the box for a single candidate of the opposing party farther down the ballot, that is a spoiled ballot, and the machine is supposed to reject the ballot, after which a poll worker is supposed to walk over and explain that you must manually check each candidate individually in order to vote a split ticket. This did not occur.
After learning this, my mother had the newly sworn in replacement probate judge pull a random sampling of 1,000 ballots and count them. Out of these, 486 had checked the box for republican at the top, and then checked my mother's name farther down the ballot. These ballots, despite clearly being a vote cast for my mother, were counted as votes fer her republican opponent. The 486 votes from this sampling along accounted for over 0.7% of the total vote - enough to cost her the election. Needless to say, her true margin of victory was probably well over 20%. Sadly, with the bush/gore fiasco in full swing, no decent election law attorneys were available, and my mother basically gave up.
On her watch, in a single year, she cleared a 13,000+ case backlog, with many cases dating back as far as 1986. Out of over 17,000 total rulings, she was appealed 3 times, and her ruling was upheld on appeal all 3 times. To date, she remains the best judge in the history of the state. Her replacement was court ordered to both drug and alcohol abuse treatment just 2 years before his election. On the day of his sentencing, having been fired from his law firm, he read a 2 page statement where he stated under oath that he was "not fit to practice law." We learned this only 2 days before the election, and believing that nobody in their right mind would vote against someone with my mother's record, we elected not to release the information (which was public record anyway, if the local paper had been interested to begin with.) Out of his first 9 scheduled court days, he locked himself in his office and refused to come out because he couldn't face a courtroom full of people.
He has since recovered and does a pretty decent job running a fair courtroom. He does not keep as efficient of a schedule as my mother did, but he does seem to genuinely apply the law in a fair manner. Of course, it took him the better part of 6 years to get to that point. The fact remains that my mother won that election, and due to the lack of either oversight or understanding - and maybe both - of electronic voting systems, the citizens of our county were worse off for it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]