Bev Harris of Black Box Voting Releases Accenture's Voting Software 245
Gottesser writes with this excerpt from Bev Harris's Black Box Voting: "I have found and posted the actual voter list software used widely throughout the USA (TN, WI, PA, CO, KS...) for Accenture voter registration and voter histories. I located the files on a magnetic backup tape of the hard drive of a county elections IT employee, part of a 120-gig set of discovery files. The Accenture voter registration / voter history software is highly problematic, and has been reported switching voter parties in Colorado, and losing voter histories in Tennessee. Although it is now widely known that Accenture voter list software gets it wrong, just WHY the program misreports voter information so often has never been explained. I am hoping that by releasing this software to the public, it may shed light on what's really going on with our voter registration systems. I also posted a Tennessee file with work orders and release notes which shows the Accenture software has a history of tripling votes in certain ('random') voter histories, going back to 2004. Except it is not random: Other files I discovered prove it is with primarily suburban Republican precincts that votes are somehow being recorded twice and sometimes three times for certain voters in the voter history report, and this didn't just happen in 2004; it also happened in the 2008 presidential primary and in May and August 2010, and according to election commission notes in Shelby County, also in the 2012 presidential primary. Computer buffs, have at it. Much source code exists within the structure because it is built on MS Access. I do not read source code, though I can see some structural problems with the software (for example, it allows political party ID to be set differently from one precinct to another)."
Like Microsoft Excel? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, there's your problem right there....why didn't they use a (real) database?
Like Microsoft Excel?
Re:Like Microsoft Excel? (Score:4, Funny)
At my company we base all our data on powerpoint slides. That way managers are able to present the data to other managers with the ease of 2 hours of clicking "next slide". Truly you are behind the times.
Accenture wrote it? (Score:5, Funny)
Their consultants are terrible, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Re:Accenture wrote it? (Score:3, Funny)
As a colleague of mine aptly put it: "We suck, but the others suck more" (I am one of those Accenture consultants, though not in the US)
Re:"because it is built on MS Access." (Score:4, Funny)
Accenture is commonly known as Accidenture.
Re:Good work (Score:3, Funny)
They gave her a sex change too? Whoever THEM are, THEM are good!
Re:Like Microsoft Excel? (Score:3, Funny)
Well, there's your problem right there....why didn't they use a (real) database?
Like Microsoft Excel?
Are you sure it was Microsoft Access the database?
Maybe they used the original Microsoft Access [msdn.com], the serial communication program that failed to compete with Procomm and Qmodem and suchlike back in the late 1980s to early 1990s. It would explain a lot...
Intriguingly, references to the original Microsoft Access have vanished from Wikipedia and from almost everywhere on the web.