Judge Voids Election Results Over E-Voting Results That Couldn't Be Audited

from the nice-work dept

Apparently a judge in Alameda County, California, has voided some election results after the e-voting tallies from Diebold machines couldn't be audited. The vote was on a controversial ballot measure, where the end result was quite close. Some activists went to court to demand a recount, but elections officials had already sent the machines back to Diebold, who had conveniently erased 96% of the necessary audit information. The issue will return to the ballot in the next election. Either way, this highlights one of the problems of e-voting machines that have no verifiable audit trail, and it's nice to see a judge actually recognizing that. Of course, this time it was for a ballot measure that can wait until the next election. What about cases where these machines were used for electing officials?

Filed Under: alameda, california, e-voting
Companies: diebold

Dutch Gov't Pulls The Plug On E-Voting (For Now)

from the did-they-vote-on-that? dept

While the US is still trying to figure out what to do about problematic e-voting machines, over in the Netherlands, they've apparently decided to ditch the machines (or, at least, ditching the regulation approving the machines), at least until they've figured out a way to make them more reliable, secure and trustworthy. Sounds like a reasonable plan, though it sounds like they may be looking to bring the machines back rather quickly, with just a paper trail -- which may not be enough. At some point people need to realize that many of these machines can't be retrofitted to fix things, but need to be rethought from the ground up.

Filed Under: e-voting, netherlands

What's More Important: Accurate Elections Or Fast Results?

from the accuracy-is-overrated dept

As the debate continues over e-voting machines, we're seeing some more misplaced whining over attempts to make elections more fair and accurate. In San Francisco, election officials are complaining about the rules set by California's secretary of state, which will mean that this year's mayoral election ballots will need to be checked and counted by hand. Effectively, that means that results for the election won't be known for a few weeks -- rather than instantly. This leads to all sorts of whining and complaining from election officials about how unfair this is -- but since when should speedy results be more important than accurate vote counts? And, the problem is not the secretary of state at all (as the election officials imply). It's because of two separate e-voting firms who refused to take the necessary steps to make sure their machines could be properly reviewed.

First, there's Election Systems and Software (ES&S) makers of buggy e-voting machines (that they admitted in internal memos) that have been known to lose votes or count them in triplicate depending on the election. San Francisco currently uses ES&S machines to count ballots, but those machines don't work very well -- especially if the voter isn't using exactly the right type of pen or pencil. When the secretary of state demanded that ES&S allow outside security experts to examine their machines and software, the company refused to allow it, and then finally gave in, well past the deadline, and included an angry petulent letter threatening the secretary of state. This, despite the fact that the company was caught providing uncertified equipment for the last election. With all that baggage, is it any wonder that the secretary of state would ask for a more thorough method of counting the votes?

The second e-voting firm, Sequoia, was chosen by San Francisco as a replacement vendor to get rid of the questionable ES&S machines. Of course, Sequoia has its own share of problems. Last year it was revealed that there was a button on the machines that would put the machine into "manual" mode and let you vote multiple times. Sequoia claimed this button was a feature. Reasonably, San Francisco's board of supervisors requested that Sequoia hand over their software to be reviewed -- a request which Sequoia refused. Thus, the board rejected the contract... leaving everyone in the situation they're in today. So, while elections officials may complain about the rules for counting votes, it's not the secretary of state they should blame, but the e-voting companies who continue to stonewall when it comes to actually making sure their machines are secure and accurate. And, in the meantime, can someone explain to elections officials that their job is to conduct fair and accurate elections, rather than elections with quick results?

Filed Under: california, e-voting
Companies: es&s

Think Tank Bashes Paper Trails For E-Voting

from the missing-the-point dept

A think tank has released a report bashing the idea of requiring paper trails for e-voting systems. The logic behind this uses some sleight of hand and some misdirection to make such a statement actually try to sound sensible. The key argument the group makes is that a paper trail would not increase security while increasing cost. That's actually true -- but that's not the point. People aren't asking for a paper trail to increase security. They're asking for a paper trail to make the machines auditable so the machine's ability to count accurately can be checked. In response to this, the think tank notes that the paper trail might not be perfect, so it's a waste. They point out that printers jam and the hand counts of paper trails may not be accurate either. That's nice, but again it's missing the point. Without those things, there's simply no way of knowing whether or not the computer count was accurate or whether the votes were tampered with. No one has suggested that a paper trail is the perfect solution to all of e-voting's problems. No one denies that paper trails potentially add other problems to the process. But the concern here is not in making e-voting cheaper -- but in making it better. Adding additional mechanisms to make the machines more reliable and more trustworthy seems like a reasonable step, though certainly not the only one that should be taken.

Filed Under: e-voting, paper trail

ES&S Gave California E-Voting Machines That Weren't Certified

from the and-the-hits-keep-coming dept

Well, the hits keep for Election Systems & Software (ES&S). The company was already facing some controversy over the fact that its e-voting machines time stamped the ballots in a way that could reveal how voters voted, and now California's Secretary of State has discovered that the company gave the state e-voting machines for the last election that were not certified. California had certified one model of ES&S machines, but the company sold a different model to five counties. The state is now looking to fine ES&S. Of course, ES&S is also the company that originally refused to hand over its source code to the state, but eventually did so along with a threatening letter about how it would hold the Secretary of State personally responsible for any trade secrets that leaked. Trade secrets like how their machines accidentally were found to count votes in triplicate? ES&S, by the way, is also the company whose machines were used in the Florida election where many votes went missing, and it was later discovered that the company had passed around memos about their buggy software that could have caused the problem. It's also the company that had an employee come here to Techdirt and post a bunch of angry comments about how e-voting machines were perfectly safe and went through more than enough testing. Apparently not in California. Update: As pointed out in the comments, the company also was just caught failing to disclose foreign manufacturing partners to federal agencies, as it's required to do. ES&S's response on being caught? Shrugged it off as an oversight that they would fix. It appears that the company doesn't seem to worry about getting punished for all its mistakes.

Filed Under: california, e-voting
Companies: es&s

E-Voting Ballots May Not Be So Secret; Paper Trail Takes Away Anonymity

from the line-'em-up,-match-'em-up dept

Another day, another security problem with e-voting machines. Obviously, one of the biggest requests from people who were nervous about the security of e-voting machines was that all e-voting machines have a verifiable paper trail. Then, at least, there's a way to recount the votes if there are any questions. Unfortunately, even when the e-voting companies finally do add a paper trail, it seems that they muck up the process. As was noted in the recent security analysis of these machines, many of the problems are because they weren't designed from the ground up with security in mind, but rather have security procedures slapped on as extras.

In this case, some Ohio activists discovered that the paper trail coming from e-voting firm Election Systems and Software (ES&S) happen to have time and date stamps on them. Those ballots are available for anyone to look at, based on election law in Ohio. Also available for anyone to peruse are the voter sign-in logs. With both of those in hand, it's not hard to put together a pretty decent list of who voted for what. You just match up the names in the order they signed in with the timestamp on the ballots.

Of course, rather than responding to this as they should, by admitting it was a bad idea, ES&S sends out their PR people to say it's no big deal. While ES&S is right that it might not always be possible to do an exact match person to person, you can come pretty close -- and that should be seen as a huge concern. Furthermore, as Ed Felten points out, the other e-voting firms aren't much better, and Diebold (or Premiere, or whatever its new name is) appears to be outright lying skirting the truth when it claims that its paper trail doesn't include timestamps (update:: Ed Felten points out that the Diebold ballots don't have a time stamp, but the electronic records do). It's not hard to see how this happened, but the continued denial and stonewalling from the e-voting companies, rather than admitting a mistake was made and explaining how they're going to fix things, really is troubling.

Filed Under: e-voting, ohio
Companies: diebold, es&s, hart intercivic, sequoia

For Sale! Crappy E-Voting System With A Horrible Reputation For Security! What? No Takers?

from the who-wouldn't-want-to-buy-it? dept

Last October, Diebold admitted that all of the bad publicity around the security problems related to their e-voting machines had the company thinking not about fixing those security problems, being more open with the security community and admitting their past mistakes -- but about getting out of the business entirely by selling the unit off to some other company to deal with. Of course, when just about every headline about your company is trashing it -- and the best you can do is crack jokes about the security problems and deny any problems exist (despite tons and tons of evidence by well-known experts in the field) -- you might imagine it would be tough to find a willing buyer. You'd be right. Diebold admitted today that no one wants to buy the e-voting unit, so the company is stuck with it. So what's the company going to do? Admit it made mistakes in the past and is now going to fix them and take e-voting concerns seriously? Of course not! They're simply going to distance the e-voting business from the rest of the company. They're going to run the e-voting unit entirely separately from the rest of Diebold (which is a big ATM maker). The quotes from Diebold's CEO don't sound like someone who is trying to fix a struggling business, but someone who wants to distance himself from the business, saying that they'll support it for the "foreseeable future." Perhaps if the company had actually taken all of the concerns seriously the business wouldn't be struggling and the rest of the company wouldn't be so ashamed to be associated with the e-voting portion.

Filed Under: e-voting
Companies: diebold

You Can't Patch An Election

from the but-that-won't-stop-them-from-trying dept

Tim Lee points us to e-voting security researcher Avi Rubin talking about how California Secretary of State Debra Bowen took part in a workshop on e-voting this week, right after the whole decertification/recertification of e-voting machines in California. Rubin notes that Bowen made some insightful comments about how the traditional voting machine certification process doesn't make any sense when it comes to software. Certifying an old mechanical voting machine was pretty straightforward, because you tested it out and if it did what you needed it to do, you expect it to pretty much do that every time. However, we all know that software doesn't quite work that way, and software is always being changed, patched and upgraded, especially as new vulnerabilities are found. Unfortunately, that doesn't work so well with the old certification process. Of course, that leaves open the question of what do you do about it. It's unclear from the wording of the post whether the following statement is from Rubin or Bowen, but it's worth repeating either way:

"Software is designed to be upgraded, and patch management systems are the norm. A certification system that requires freezing a version in stone is doomed to failure because of the inherent nature of software. Since we cannot change the nature of software, the certification process for voting machines needs to be radically revamped. The dependence on software needs to be eliminated."

However, perhaps the best insight into this comes in the simple statement that Tim Lee used as the headline for his post on the subject, which was so good that we're reusing it here as well: You Can't Patch An Election.

Filed Under: e-voting, elections

California Decertifies E-Voting Machines... Then Recertifies Them (With A Few Conditions)

from the not-quite-what-we-hoped-for dept

Following the release of the various independent security reports last week on the e-voting machines used in Californa, the Secretary of State needed to decide by Friday night whether to keep the machines in use in the state. At 11:45pm, she decided to decertify the machines only to immediately recertify them if they made some security changes. Of course, it seems like the changes are simply patches, and as the original report noted, many of the security problems the machines have is because all of the security they've implemented was patched on as an afterthought. Until the machines are designed from the ground up with security in mind, it's not likely to really fix many of the vulnerabilities. But, in the meantime, there's an election coming up, and apparently a bunch of major security problems are no reason to get rid of the expensive e-voting machines the state has already purchased.

Filed Under: california, e-voting
Companies: diebold, es&s, hart intercivic, sequoia

Even More Trouble For E-Voting Firms: Source Code Review Finds All Sorts Of Scary Vulnerabilities

from the doesn't-look-good dept

This has not been a good week for e-voting companies. First came the report out of California that the security had problems on every machine tested by independent security experts, followed quickly by security experts finding problems with other machines in Florida. This should come as no surprise. Every time a security expert seems to get a chance to check out these machines, they find problems. What was odd, though, about the announcement on Monday coming out of California, was that the state had only released some of the reports. It left out the source code review. However, late Thursday, the source code reports were finally released and things don't look much better. Apparently all of the e-voting machines are vulnerable to malicious attacks that could "affect election outcomes." The report also points out: "An attack could plausibly be accomplished by a single skilled individual with temporary access to a single voting machine. The damage could be extensive -- malicious code could spread to every voting machine in polling places and to county election servers." This, of course, is what others have been saying for years, and which Diebold always brushes off. Ed Felten has gone through the reports and is amazed to find that all of the e-voting machines seem to have very similar security problems -- and that many problems that Diebold had insisted it fixed in 2003 were still present. Remember how Diebold had used the master password "1111" in their machines? Now their machines use hard-coded passwords like "diebold" and (I kid you not) "12345678." At some point, isn't it time for Diebold (and the other e-voting machine makers) to stand up and admit that their machines aren't secure and, in fact, were never secure? At the very least, the company owes the world a huge apology -- but somehow, given its past behavior whenever its machines are shown as insecure, that seems unlikely to happen.

Filed Under: e-voting, security, vulnerabilities
Companies: diebold