Is Your Vote Going to Count?
Everybody is suspicious of the new electronic voting machines. Actually, if you haven't been following the story closely, it's much worse than you think. Several ways have been found that would let a motivated person change votes in one of those machines.
Now Raw Story is reporting that the worst flaw of all has been found:
This isn't a partisan issue. Both sides would suspect the other of trying to cheat, if something didn't come out the way they wanted. And who could blame them? The people immersed in electioneering and campaigning are thinking about nothing but winning -- it's wrong, but you just know they'd pull something if they knew they could get away with it. Let's just say, it wouldn't be the first time somebody manipulated the vote, but this technology would allow it to happen on a grander scale, and easier, than ever before.
There is about a fifty-fifty chance that Stalin once said, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." Whether he said it or not, it is appearing that some form of that statement will be true in the near future, as those who count the votes will appoint whatever winner they prefer, if the rest of us don't pay attention.
Now Raw Story is reporting that the worst flaw of all has been found:
The Open Voting Foundation, a California-based nonprofit organization that works to promote the adoption of "open source" technology to the nation's voting machines, has announced it has found what it calls the "worst ever security flow found in Diebold RS voting machines."
The Foundation claims to have discovered a switch inside of the machine which, when flipped, can have the machine operate in "a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version."
"Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant," said the Foundation's President Alan Descert, in a statement obtained by RAW STORY. "If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS -- and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver," he continued. GROUP: 'Vote counts can be changed with the flip of a a switch'
This isn't a partisan issue. Both sides would suspect the other of trying to cheat, if something didn't come out the way they wanted. And who could blame them? The people immersed in electioneering and campaigning are thinking about nothing but winning -- it's wrong, but you just know they'd pull something if they knew they could get away with it. Let's just say, it wouldn't be the first time somebody manipulated the vote, but this technology would allow it to happen on a grander scale, and easier, than ever before.
Technical specifications of the report may be read in the statement, an excerpt from which follows:
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The most serious issue is the ability to choose between "EPROM" and "FLASH" boot configurations. Both of these memory sources are present. All of the switches in question (JP2, JP3, JP8, SW2 and SW4) are physically present on the board. It is clear that this system can ship with live boot profiles in two locations, and switching back and forth could change literally everything regarding how the machine works and counts votes. This could be done before or after the so-called "Logic And Accuracy Tests".
A third possible profile could be field-added in minutes and selected in the "external flash" memory location, the interface for which is present on the motherboard.
This is not a minor variation from the previously documented attack point on the newer Diebold TSx. To its credit, the TSx can only contain one boot profile at a time. Diebold has ensured that it is extremely difficult to confirm what code is in a TSx (or TS) at any one time but it is at least theoretically possible to do so. But in the TS, a completely legal and certified set of files can be instantly overridden and illegal uncertified code be made dominant in the system, and then this situation can be reversed leaving the legal code dominant again in a matter of minutes.
"These findings underscore the need for open testing and certification. There is no way such a security vulnerability should be allowed. These systems should be recalled."
There is about a fifty-fifty chance that Stalin once said, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." Whether he said it or not, it is appearing that some form of that statement will be true in the near future, as those who count the votes will appoint whatever winner they prefer, if the rest of us don't pay attention.
posted by JimK at 9:23 PM
19 Comments:
Voting Early--and Often
Maryland swims against the election-reform current.
BY JOHN H. FUND
Thursday, February 9, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
ANNAPOLIS, Md.--It should normally be difficult to pick the worst state legislature in America, but Maryland's is way out in front. First it overrode GOP Gov. Bob Ehrlich's veto of a special health-care tax on Wal-Mart. Democratic legislators then passed three election-related bills and again mustered the necessary three-fifths votes to overturn his vetoes. Together the election laws would so weaken safeguards against voter fraud as to make Maryland the nation's prime example of Election Day irresponsibility.
The gravity of the changes is causing dismay, and not just for the governor. A bipartisan state advisory commission headed by the revered George Beall, the former U.S. attorney who convicted Spiro Agnew of tax evasion, had urged legislators to sustain the Ehrlich vetoes.
The most troublesome bill undermines the concept of local polling places by allowing all voters to vote anywhere in Maryland using a provisional ballot. Gilles Burger, chairman of the state's Board of Elections, flatly says the bill invites fraud. His testimony prompted the Beall commission to warn that it would mean "a provisional ballot could be cast successfully in multiple counties and not be detected until after the votes were certified."
Another bill would allow any voter to cast an absentee ballot for any reason. The state's League of Women Voters noted that the bill undermines Election Day as the foundational day when votes are by law supposed to be cast. The league points out that absentee voting increases risks to "privacy, accuracy, security" and creates opportunities for "intimidation." Evidence also shows that absentee ballots are the most susceptible to fraud--and do not increase voter turnout.
A third bill imposes an unfunded mandate requiring all of Maryland's counties to let voters cast ballots during the five days before Election Day. Linda Lamore, the state's election administrator, warned legislators of her concerns about ballot security as well as her doubts the counties could comply by November.
Common Cause, which supports early voting, urged legislators to delay its implementation until 2008. The warnings fell on deaf ears. "You'll always have fraud, you can forget about that," Democratic state legislator Gareth Murray told colleagues. "I'm sick and tired of hearing we're not ready." Maryland will now become the only state in the nation to allow statewide early voting on touch-screen machines that lack a verifiable paper trail.
Fraud has a rich history in Maryland. In 19th-century Baltimore, the notorious Fourth Ward Club hired thugs to seize innocent strangers and foreigners, drug them with whiskey and opiates and send them out to cast multiple votes. One biographer of Edgar Allan Poe believes that when Poe died in 1849, he had been a victim of ruthless vote-fraud toughs who kidnapped him and left him drunk and near death on a Baltimore street. Today, Republicans accuse Baltimore Democrats of holding back stuffed ballot boxes until other counties have reported, while Democrats blame the GOP for an anonymous 2002 flyer that told Baltimore voters to turn out on the wrong Election Day after first paying overdue parking tickets and rent.
That hardball history doesn't fully explain the Legislature's actions, however. Blair Lee IV, the son of a former Democratic governor who is supporting an Ehrlich opponent this year, questions why Democrats are "pushing through such dangerous election laws opposed by nonpartisan election officials." He warns his party that "nothing is more important than the integrity of elections--not even defeating the Republicans in November."
But partisan tensions are now at flood level in Annapolis. Mr. Ehrlich, the first GOP governor in four decades, claims some Baltimore Sun writers are so unfair he won't cooperate with them. For his part, State Senate President Mike Miller boasted this month to his caucus that "we're going to shoot [Republican leaders] down. We're going to bury them face down in the ground, and it'll be 10 years before they crawl out again." Startled Republicans hope to collect 50,000 signatures calling for a November referendum on one or more of the election bills, a move that would block them from taking effect until after a vote.
Last September, a national commission headed by Jimmy Carter and James Baker recommended that all states require a valid photo ID to vote. Indeed, many states are now moving to boost polling safeguards. This month, Georgia's Legislature passed a revised law requiring every voter show a photo ID. Despite claims by NAACP chairman Julian Bond that a photo ID represents "an onerous poll tax," 10 House Democrats voted "aye." After all, the new Georgia law requires issuance of a free ID to anyone now lacking one.
Other legislatures are preparing to pass similar photo ID laws based on the recommendations of the Carter-Baker commission. They include Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, although Democratic governors in the last two are poised to veto them.
The proposed Pennsylvania law would also end Philadelphia's bizarre practice of locating over 900 polling places in private buildings, including bars, abandoned buildings and even the office of a local state senator. City officials acknowledge privately their voter rolls are stuffed with phantoms. The city has about as many registered voters as it has adults.
But no set of new laws will work if prosecutors encourage bad behavior by failing to pursue election irregularities. Several tell me they fear being accused of racism and aiding voter-suppression tactics if they pursue touchy fraud cases. One district attorney told the U.S. Government Accountability Office that he doesn't pursue phony voter registrations because they are "victimless and nonviolent crimes."
When voters are disenfranchised by the counting of improperly cast ballots or outright fraud, their civil rights are violated just as surely as if they were prevented from voting. The integrity of the ballot box is just as important to the credibility of elections as access to it. The Maryland lawmakers who are opening up new opportunities for fraud weaken the civil rights of all their constituents.
Mr. Fund, a columnist for OpinionJournal.com, is the author of "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy" (Encounter Books, 2004).
"Maryland will now become the only state in the nation to allow statewide early voting on touch-screen machines that lack a verifiable paper trail."
That is the only thing Wall Street Journal Columnist John Fund says in this article about unauditable electronic machines. I may be wrong, but I believe it has been Gov. Ehrlich who has been most opposed to moving to auditable systems. What does Fund say in his book about Diebold unauditable electronic voting machines? Is he frightened about the problems noted by Jim in the above blog?
you would be wrong the Gov has raised the issue.
As Governor, has he done anything to get voting machines that can be audited? Cites, please.
"Cites, please. " you have a lot of nerve.
By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA
April 11, 2006
Maryland voters will vote on paperless touchscreen voting machines again this year thanks to concerted efforts by Democratic State Senate President Mike Miller and Senator Paula Hollinger, chair of the committee on Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs.
In a disappointment to election integrity activists nationwide, the Senate killed a bill that had passed unanimously in the Maryland House of Delegates that would have called for voter verified paper records and mandatory audits on thde last day of the legislative session. As sent to the Senate, the bill also included an amendment that called for implementing a paper ballot optical scan voting system for this year's elections. In addition to the unanimous support of the House of Delegates, the proposal also had the full support of Governor Robert Ehrlich, Jr. (R).
Senator Hollinger is running for the U.S. House seat currently held by Rep. Benjamin Cardin. Senator Hollinger has ensured that it will be impossible to independently verify the results of that election results and that the votes of Maryland citizens will be counted by propreitary software provided by Diebold Election Systems.
the liberal Stalin once said, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything."
Anonymous writes,
the liberal Stalin once said, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything."
Nothing could be further from the truth...Stalin was a mass murderer and a totalitarian thug. Liberals may be mistaken in their understanding of human nature, but they are not murderers or totalitarian thugs.
****
I believe for the sake of the legitimacy of future elections in this country that paper ballots be mandated. In fact I believe it is so important that a Constitutional Amendment may be in order. Yes, the touch screen, paper-less, balloting is more efficient, but that must not be the first consideration on election day.
What should be the first consideration? Integrity of the process of elections.
THE SKY IS FALLING...the sky is falling!!! What is wrong with Kansas?...don't they know that some in the Porn Belt don't approve of their politics?
Well, Thomas Frank would say that "largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class." (from a blurb on Amazon.com for the book, _What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America_, by Thomas Frank).
I am repelled by the business uber alles attitude of the Republican Party, but for the sake of social issues I am willing to go along for the ride. When Roe is finally overturned, and the issue is returned to the States, if the Republican Party forgets where it stands on the issue then I will only be too happy to remind them. What? Will I vote for the Democrat say GOP hacks ask? No, but neither will they get my vote.
Anti-Evolution Incumbent in Kansas Wins
Associated Press
Wednesday, August 2, 2006; Page A16
TOPEKA, Kan., Aug. 1 -- . A member of the state Board of Education who approved new classroom standards that call evolution into question held onto his seat Tuesday, turning back a challenge from two defenders of Darwin.
Anonymous said...
"Cites, please. " you have a lot of nerve.
How is it "nervy" to ask for verification of statements that are not obviously true to everyone in a particular discussion? Since you cloak yourself as "Anonymous," I certainly have no reason to accept anything you say here on faith.
On this issue, your statement about Governor Ehrlich was correct. As this Gazette article shows, it was the Democratic Senate leadership that opposed the change. See
http://www.gazette.net/stories/031606/carrcou181124_31950.shtml
Progressive Democrats (and the Democrats in the House of Delegates) were on the same side as Ehrlich on this issue. It is a shame that Senate President Miller was not and derailed the effort.
I am pleased to learn that the desire in Maryland to have auditable ballot systems is bi-partisan.
But to get back to Anonymous' being offended at my asking for citation, I think it illustrates the difference between some of the contributors to this space. Some of us wish to rely on facts; others on preconceptions. It is never improper to ask for evidence.
I think, Anonymous, that if you review my contributions to these discussions, you will see that I typically provide links to evidence when I am stating more than an opinion. Providing evidence enables us to have a discussion, rather than talking past each other.
How selective of you, Orin. Here's the rest of the story from Kansas:
Evolution Opponents Voted Off Kansas Board of Education
By JOHN HANNA, AP
TOPEKA, Kan. (Aug. 2) - Conservative Republicans who brought international attention to Kansas by approving academic standards calling evolution into question lost control of the state school board in primaries.
As a result of the vote, board members and candidates who believe evolution is well-supported by evidence will have a 6-4 majority. Evolution skeptics had entered the election with a 6-4 majority.
Five seats were on the ballot this year. Three incumbent conservatives faced primary foes, and there was a contested GOP race for the seat held by a retiring conservative. A pro-evolution Democratic incumbent also had a challenger.
With almost all the votes counted early Wednesday, pro-evolution Republican Jana Shaver picked off a conservative incumbent and won the primary for the open seat.
Conservative Republican John Bacon kept his seat by besting two pro-evolution challengers, as did another conservative incumbent, Ken Willard. Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat who opposed the new standards, easily defeated a more conservative Democrat who favored the anti-evolution language.
The most closely watched race was in western Kansas, where incumbent conservative Connie Morris lost her GOP primary to Sally Cauble. Both are former educators, but Morris had described evolution as "an age-old fairy tale" and "a nice bedtime story" unsupported by science.
David S. Fishback said...
Anonymous said...
"Cites, please. " You have a lot of nerve.
How is it "nervy" to ask for verification of statements that are not obviously true to everyone in a particular discussion? Since you cloak yourself as "Anonymous," I certainly have no reason to accept anything you say here on faith.
No my comment was based on the sex-ed curriculum that you tried to have implemented. One full of your personal beliefs outdated information and violations of the civil rights of the citizens of Montgomery County.
If your beliefs were more subjective to the facts than we would all be spending are time doing more important things.
“but I believe it has been Gov. Ehrlich who has been most opposed to moving to auditable systems.”
I do not know what revisionist history book you found this in, but from Stalin to Castro you do see a pattern of behavior. That cannot be denied if you allow your opinions to be subject to the facts.
Orin Ryssman said..
Nothing could be further from the truth...Stalin was a mass murderer and a totalitarian thug. Liberals may be mistaken in their understanding of human nature, but they are not murderers or totalitarian thugs.
45,000,000 and counting Stalin would be so proud.
So It all comes down to who killed the bill that would be the democrts. why they did that I think we all know in are harts.
the Senate killed a bill that had passed unanimously in the Maryland House of Delegates that would have called for voter verified paper records and mandatory audits on thde last day of the legislative session.
Anon said "So It all comes down to who killed the bill"
But Anon already told us who killed the bill by citing this:
"Senator Hollinger is running for the U.S. House seat currently held by Rep. Benjamin Cardin. Senator Hollinger has ensured that it will be impossible to independently verify the results of that election"
The candidates for a congressional race in Ann Arundel County have exactly *nothing* to do with the sex education curriculum in MCPS. The only time Ann Arundel county has been even tangentially involved in this Montgomery County debate was when the CRC invited Maryland State Delegate Don Dwyer to give their keynote *hate speech* last March. Even then CRC leaders felt the need to distance themselves from that speech.
Since you've been posting comments here Anon, the CRC doesn't post comments on this blog anymore. Apparently they are too ashamed to be associated with a hater like you.
And talk about revisionist history! If you think David wrote the last revision of the sex education curriculum all by himself, you are seriously mistaken. Every item (including the few teacher resources the judge found objectionable) in that curriculum was voted on by the members of the CACFLHD and the entire curriculum was approved by each and every elected member of the Montgomery County BOE.
Anonymous said...
Anon said "So It all comes down to who killed the bill"
The candidates for a congressional race in Ann Arundel County have exactly *nothing* to do with the sex education curriculum in MCPS.
We are talking about the new election laws, not the sex-ed curriculum I don’t know how you could have got the two confused? Try reading so you can keep up!
A Feb. 17 memo from Weast to the board said recommendations would be brought to the board for a vote this month. Weast backed away from that schedule on Tuesday.
‘‘Last time my office didn’t thoroughly do its due diligence in its review, nor did our attorneys do it, and we’re not going to go there again,” he said.
Somehow Anonymous thought it was legitimate to attack my request for citation for one of his statements because of my support for the revisions to the health education curriculum. I can't quite follow his logic, but if anyone wants citations underlying that curriculum, just go to the Resources page of www.teachthefacts.org and click on this link on the left side of the page: Fishback 7/27/05 BOE Testimony with attachments (big pdf)
I think Weast says it all.
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