Diebold's Election Data Off-limits 497
tommcb writes "The State of Alaska Division of Elections has denied a request by the Alaska Democratic Party for the raw file format used to tabulate voting results by citing that the data is in a proprietary format that is owned by Diebold. The ADP says 'The official vote results from the last general election are riddled with discrepancies and impossible for the public to make sense of'. The article contains some good quotes from Jim March of Black Box Voting: 'Copies of these kinds of files have been sitting on the Internet for over two years, with Diebold's knowledge.'"
am i missing something here? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me that election software is pretty simple. It's basically a list of candidates and the number of votes each one got. Or you could have a log file of the candidate that people voted for. How on earth can you make a proprietary format out of this? It's just a simple list! I don't get it.
Diebold nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
The format isn't patented, I don't think, and isn't copyrightable, so the only legal protection it might have is trade secret. However, since the format is already out in the open, due both to revelation in other states and from the Diebold files posted on the net, it is no longer a trade secret and there is nothing that Diebold can complain about.
Furthermore, I don't see that anything actually prevents the State of Alaska from revealing the file format even if it is a trade secret. What can Diebold do about it? The State probably has sovereign immunity, and in any case, the secret is probably worth nothing so even if Diebold sued successfully they wouldn't get any damages to speak of.
Meanwhile here in Canada yet another election has been conducted without any problem using simple paper ballots. Just five lines with the names and parties of the candidates and a circle in which to draw an X. No need for voting machines, no possibility of confusion, minimal opportunity for fraud.
North Carolina (Score:4, Interesting)
Cryptographically secure voting (Score:4, Interesting)
If I understood correctly, we could have a nationwide vote, everyone leaves with a piece of paper with a number printed on it, and can take that number home and verify that their vote was correctly counted on the internet (where public lists of votes are posted), while the whole system remained anonymous. It looked like election fraud could be completely eliminated.
There were more complex schemes with paired barcodes and filtered light or something, but that was the basic idea.
If such a scheme can be mathematically proven to be secure, why aren't we using it?
If what they say is true... (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, district-by-district vote totals add up to 292,267 votes for President Bush, but his official total was only 190,889.
Election officials have an explanation. Early votes for statewide candidates were not recorded by House district but rather were tallied for each of the state's four election regions.
My observation:
If this is true, shouldn't 292267 minus 190889 be divisible by 3 (considering these votes were counted three extra times)?
The answer (101378) isn't...
Load shotgun, aim, amputate foot (Score:5, Interesting)
I couldn't be more pleased with this.
Diebold, by refusing to release the data, shows what a boondoggle it is to allow public information to be locked up in proprietary format.
The State plays right into the Bush-Gore-2000 paranoia over ballot counting. They're not allowed to release the raw data, because of the mistake they made allowing a proprietary format to be used.
A transformation of the data (be it a printout, ASCII dump, spreadsheet, or whatever) is not sufficient. Any transformation process is likely to use the same (proprietary) algorithm that was used to generate the official results, which could have hidden errors. It also makes me wonder what else is in the format, perhaps data that shouldn't be there.
Yup, this is a positive development.
Re:Cryptographically secure voting (Score:2, Interesting)
Because the only people who understand it are too busy posting about in on
Re:So much for copyrights (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a more advanced point of view than your "earlier rights trump the latter one", in my opinion.
The problem with trumping is that once you allow it, then there will be endless bickering on who comes first, etc. This will then spawn endless bureaucracies, legislations, and executive bodies made for enforcement -- precisely the kind of thing you as a "libertarian" should theoretically despise. If you want to eliminate bureaucracy and bs, then it's in your best interest to eliminate as much bickering as possible, and that includes bickering over rights too. The ideapshere is the most turbulent and fickle space there is, and designating any rights in that sphere, any rights whatsoever, will lead to an explosion in disagreements, and hence the need for governance will increase and not decrease.
Re:Diebold's bad, but officials also to blame (Score:3, Interesting)
If Diebold copyrighted the database structure and registered the copyright with the LOC, actual damages will be of little concern as they could sue for $150,000 statutory damages per infringement of their copyright. So the damages would not be "nominal".
On the other hand, if the state cannot release the data, there is a question of whether the people could sue to overturn the election based on that as well as suing to have the use of the Diebold machines declared unconstitutional because of the prohibition on releasing the data.
I think it's in Diebold's best interest to back down on the copyright claim. If citizens nationwide sued to make the use of these machines unconstitutional, and got elections overturned, then the states could conceivably sue Diebold for selling them defective machines, recouping the cost of buying the machines, the cost of integrating them into their election systems, and the cost of re-running all elections that were overturned. And the defect would not be the machines themselves, but Diebold's IP stance on the software.
There's a genuine public interest in having the election system be as transparent as possible. That doesn't mean courts should force Diebold to remove the opacity they're injecting into the process. They're perfectly entitled to do that. But it does mean courts can force states and municipalities to stop using Diebold machines and overturn elections in which Diebold machines were used. In terms of an end-result that protects voters' rights, such court decisions would be the ideal outcome.
Greg
Re:Solution: Make an X (Score:1, Interesting)
No, they don't. Many, many other jurisdictions have paper counts and it gets done in a couple hours, max. I find it hard to believe that the rest of the world has a secret paper-counting technology that the USA can't duplicate.
Or, just have paper ballots that are machine readable like multiple-choice exam sheets. All the advantages of paper, with the benefits of machine counting.
Past Canadian Results: RAW Format + other musings (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand how this cannot be public knowledge in the States. I just checked Elections Canada [elections.ca] and the raw database information is available right on their site [elections.ca] to anyone that wants it.
In Canada we only have to make one choice; the minister we would like to be elected to parlament in our riding. As I understand it, in the States you make a bunch of decisions on the same ballot. Many Canadians have posted that "Oh... The paper works just fine here.. Silly Americans". Obviously! we only have one x to mark and count... I can see where electronic ballots can be useful in the States although I don't see how they can be as transparent as paper ballots...However, in Canada the WHOLE election system is completely transparent and any citizen can access any information they wish through the public organization 'Elections Canada'. A similar public system should be in place in any democracy.
On another topic I'll throw this out there.. Why not have paper ballots that can be read into computers. Wouldn't you have the best of both worlds? Both a paper record and electronic counting/
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is why (Score:4, Interesting)
There were repeated requests for basic information, but the King Co. elections department (run by D's) either didn't provide the information or covered it up or even openly lied about it, all this while an important trial is being held to uncover who was really elected. Based on admissions by the elections department, they manufactured votes and counted votes that should not have been counted.
What's even sadder is the Sec. of State (an R) promised to clean up the rolls with a statewide database, and promised that database to be online Jan 1. Except even now, nobody seems able to obtain a copy of that database, and the Sec. of State says it won't come out until February. We'll see if it really does.
For more information, go read the research Stefan Sharkansky has been doing at http://soundpolitics.com./ [soundpolitics.com.] It'll give you great insight into how elections departments should act versus how they do act.
I'm an R, but I don't tolerate this kind of crap, not in Alaska, not here in Washington, and not anywhere. We must have a publically accountable voting system, or we'll have people who say the only way to affect change in government is through violence. I don't want another civil war, particularly if it could've been prevented by people running elections openly and honestly.
Re:Diebold's bad, but officials also to blame (Score:3, Interesting)
And nothing would cure us of the fact that nearly half the population is of sub-normal intelligence.
Re:Weird elections... (Score:4, Interesting)
I saw things the same way here. The exit polls were the real smoking gun.
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Computerized voting is a great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Data stored on paper is visible to the naked eye and is write-only. Those two features aren't sufficient to make ballot fraud impossible (you also need trustworthy volunteers watching every ballot box!), but they are necessary, and no other form of computer-written storage really qualifies. If you put 5 paper ballots in a box, you can be very sure that you'll later pull those same 5 paper ballots out of the box and the writing on them will be unchanged. If I don't trust you, I can volunteer to go sit next to you and keep my own eyes on the box. If you put 5 electronic ballots on a hard drive, then you're one buffer overflow or back door away from pulling 31337 ballots out.
With computer voting machines nearly any of the hardware and software designers involved has an opportunity to insert subtle trojan code into the system, and there's no way for a concerned volunteer to verify the system's integrity unless they have an electron microscope, permission to dismantle voting machines, and a better eye for software security than every OS vendor in existence. You're right that what's important is guaranteeing the chain of custody from the voter to the count; I'm saying that when the chain of custody includes a black box that can rewrite its own innards, such guarantees are impossible.
That's not to say computers can't be a part of the process. You could make ballot tampering much harder by printing out ballot copies for each of three separately stored ballot boxes. Unofficial electronic counts can give fast unofficial results while acting as an error indicator against tampering with the official paper ballots. You can use automatic optical counting for higher precision but combine it with hand counts for fraud prevention. All that's important is that the ballot get verified by the voter casting it, after which verification it is impossible to change. The easiest way to ensure that is to make sure computers are just the start of the process and a more transparent technology like paper is the end.
Two things: (Score:2, Interesting)
2) It is up to each state to decide how to select their electors. No state is under any constitutional obligation to use Diebold machines, or indeed to use popular voting at all! State governments could draw straws, hold snail races, or require prospective electors to duel - it's whatever the state government wants. As such, any state government could very well prefer to use knowingly crooked vote tabulating devices, since anyways it is the state government that gets to decide how electors are choosen. Using a known-to-be-crooked device is a method a state government chooses. It's all quite constitutional, even if it seems "unfair" to the "average Joe".
If you don't like it, get a recall movement going and replace your existing crooked state government. The problem, and thus the solution, lies with the state government end of things, not the federal government end.
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
The flight control and FAA systems have a rigorus backup system, and redundancies. They have certification levels for the software developers, and even the install too! (like, good luck plugging your airport radar controller into a ordinary wall outlet, let alone one without a battery backup and generator, and you do test your generator monthly, right?). And all hardware is tested like crazy, and certified.. (you buy this system, with this power supply, this exact model of nic, etc) Their are paper trails, backups, redundant systems, etc..
If serious questions were raised about the accuracy of these systems (like has happened to diebold) the project would be put on hold, and all questions would be answered.. Often times, the source code has to go into "escrow" in case your company goes out of business too..
India has been using Electronic Voting since 1990 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:3, Interesting)
This begs the question, what methods were used to access the data provided? Diebold is claiming the reports on the data stored in the system are all anyone is entitled to. I am assuming, since views are part of an Access database, they are claiming these are protected as well.
M