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CA Proposes Rigorous Voting Machine Testing
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:20 PM
from the red-five-standing-by dept.
from the red-five-standing-by dept.
christian.einfeldt writes "During her successful campaign for California Secretary of State, newly-minted California Elections Czar Debra Bowen spoke repeatedly of the need to use free open source software in voting machines to ensure the integrity of California's elections. Now that Secretary Bowen is acting on that campaign pledge, closed-source voting machine vendor Diebold worries aloud that rejecting its black-box voting machines could snarl California's elections. Diebold's concerns come at the same time that it is suing Massachusetts for declining to purchase those same voting machines." Quoting: "California's elections chief is proposing the toughest standards for voting systems in the country, so tough that they could [have the result of banishing] ATM-like touch-screen voting machines from the state. For the first time, California is demanding the right to try hacking every voting machine with 'red teams' of computer experts and to study the software inside the machines, line-by-line, for security holes."
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novel idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:novel idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:novel idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Shouldn't the list of requirements for Calfornia's voting machine aquisitions have a clause about "Company should not have repeatedly lied to California legislators, covered up known flaws, nor violated deployment policies by modifying units in the field without validation of those modifications"?
Diebold has been in trouble with California before. The fact that they can continue to even try to offer voting machines in that state kinda surprises me.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Create software for electronic voting. Use pictures of candidates (and their names, of coz').
2. Add a printing plugin that spits out a little chit with the picture of the candidate that the voter selected, as well as a bar code that includes the name of the candidate.
3. Place chit in voting box for validation if required - used in case recounts are requested.
4. Profit!!!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
A picture of the candidate and the names of their cousins?
Oh, California (Score:5, Funny)
Good idea (Score:4, Funny)
But I also think CA has been otherwise prudent. For example, using Diebold instead of volunteer open source code. I mean, how can they afford all the volunteer labor?
Re:Good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
One principal of a democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Now unless you teach everyone how to program I don't see how you can preserve this principal.
Funny thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Unaccaptable failure rate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, from what I've read, they've had problems with more than 10% of the diebold machines.
At least with an automark type system you still have the paper ballots to fall back on, even if a voter might require assistance to fill it out.
When a diebold type device malfunctions you have the potential for lost and/or erronous vote information, not to mention that NO votes can be taken.
e-voting must be as strong as paper (Score:5, Insightful)
Any replacement system must preserve the strengths of a paper ballot.
This means
In practice, this means the voting hardware and software must be open to public inspection. The same goes for the procedures used by voting officials.
It also means to the extent possible, the entire process must be observed by interested and neutral parties. Obviously the actual voting must be done in secret but anything that doesn't reveal an individual's vote should be observed. Those things that cannot be easily observed, such as actual electronic count, must be repeatable by another method, such as a hand-count, with the same results.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Mass Diebold request blocked (Score:5, Informative)
--
The proper use of a silicon ballot: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
What we need is a slot machine... (Score:4, Insightful)
A casino would never field a slot machine (even a 1c machine) that was as insecure as a Diebold voting machine.
The security model for a slot machine is rock solid. The hardware and software (source included) must be submitted and approved by each jurisdiction. The security model ensures that if even one bit in the software has been corrupted, the machine ceases to function. The cash-in and payout of each machine is redundantly logged. The machines are completely power tolerant, meaning you can cut the power at any time; when the power is restored the machine will come back up in exactly the same state that it was in before power loss. The machine can print tickets (for a paper trail), as well as talk securely over a network.
Basically, all the requirements we'd like to see in a voting machine are the same that a slot machine already conforms to. There's no reason to re-invent the wheel here, most of the work has already been done.
Treason (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe that California shouldn't have to demand transparency, I think that we citizens have implicitly expected transparency all along.
Donate to the Open Voting Consortium [openvotingconsortium.org], they've been working with Debra Bowen and many others to fix the system.
This should be so simple... (Score:4, Interesting)
Heck, I think even _I_ could design such a system:
- Buy a standard issue PC with a standard issue laserprinter
- Make a simple voting program
- Give every voter a Live CD with a unique hard coded serial.
- The CD is inserted under the supervision of election workers, and the PC is booted up.
- The voters goes behind the curtain where they find a screen, a mouse and a printer.
- The voter casts his/her wote. The vote and the unique ID is stored on the local HD, and two coppies is printed out on paper.
- The voter comes out, ejects the CD AND KEEPS IT, and puts one paper vote in a ballot box. Keeps the other copy.
- The computer is powered down before the next vote.
This way one can always check the DB against the paper ballots afterwords. AND: Every citizen who thinks the election has been tampered with can A: Review the software on their CD. B: Check the official "election website", punch in the unique ID from the CD/paper coppy and verify that it's registered correctly.
This is not complex, this is not expensive, this is not difficult, and as far as I can see; this is practicaly fool proof given a certain degree of random manual chek of wotes. (To eliminate the factor involving electorial workers doing nasty stuff to the PCs etc.)
Or am I over looking something here...?
Nice to see (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.ss.ca.gov/executive/bio.htm [ca.gov]
How hard can it be to program a voting machine? (Score:4, Interesting)
They just take votes and record them. The only remotely novel programming problem should be the security, and they don't appear to have implemented any! How can these machines keep screwing up when ATMs keep on not screwing up?
I'm not a computer scientist, but I know many of you are. Is there some hidden level of difficulty here? Some reason why making voting machines should be such a challenge for Diebold?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as I dislike CA.... (Score:3, Interesting)
And, wait... are you complaining that your car has stricter emissions standards? I'm certainly not, living in the second-most smog infested state in the US. If it weren't for CA emissions being standard on so many vehicl
Re:As much as I dislike CA.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Many car companies might, this is true. But I'd be willing to bet that some car companies would make it an option, albiet an expensive one.
As other posters have pointed out, there are cars sold that don't meet the CA standard. There's packages of solder that don't contain the "This product blah blah state of California blah blah" label. The point is, CA is deciding what's best for it, not for anyone else. It's not their fault if many large companies go along for the ride.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that you bought such a care tells me that you looked at the cars that did not meet the California emissions tests and said "No thank you".
What probably happened is that the majority of the people in the country with needs similar to yours thought that cars should meet California's tests. The few people that did not want the cleaner cars had different needs then you did.
You don't have a beef with California, you
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Interestingly, I can purchase a car in Connecticut, drive it to California, register it, and pass a smog check.
Vehicles with California emissions and vehicles without are smogged to different specifications, even here in California.
The restriction only requires new cars sold in California to conform to different standards.
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
I'm shocked. Deibold generally tries very hard to avoid the appearance of bias or impropriety, and they offer quality e-voting products that they strive to improve in response to much-appreciated constructive criticism from the community. Whenever they fix an issue with their products, like the closed-source software or the easily-copied security key, they are quick to get the updates out and always thank the community for helping them to improve their products. Their recent suit against Massachusetts has given them a serious PR boost with other states. So yes, their response to this move really surprises me.
(Sorry if your sarcasm gland is asploding.)
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