CA Proposes Rigorous Voting Machine Testing 172
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."
novel idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:novel idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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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I smell another "Diebold sues Massachusetts"
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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!!!
Or was that... (Score:2)
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A picture of the candidate and the names of their cousins?
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I have some friends in South Eastern Asia that I chat with from time to time. They quite often type "of coz'" rather than "of course". I was using the expression to refer to an attribute being included as a matter of course.
However, if you'd rather the ballot include a listing of the candidates cousins, far be it from me to stand in the way of progress
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Don't worry, I'm selling maps to the solution of that for those that couldn't follow
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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?
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The next step would be to check and make sure that the intention the code works with is the intention the people desire.
-Rick
Re:Good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
How many principles of democracy are there? (Score:2)
Umm... this is a new one to me. I mean, it sounds like a good idea, and all... but then again, if we're using the old punch-card type of voting machines, being able to verify them requires being able to read them, which many people can't do anyway. Besides the fact that in a typical presidential election, there's, what, nearly a hundred million votes cast? It's physically impossible for a single person to check that many b
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Maryland's house passed a bill to adopt optical s
Funny thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Your Fired! (Score:2)
I think that you mean (Score:2)
Political Education (Score:2)
One principal of a democracy is that everyone can verify the counting of votes. Now unless you teach everyone how to program I don't see how you can preserve this principal.
It also requires you teach everyone to count, which is up for question given the quality of our schools these days. ("Principle", by the way.)
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We do not now, nor have we ever had, any system to verify votes. We can count them again, certify them, but never verify them. Until I, as a voter, can see how the state counted my vote, no vote is ever verified. They may count my ballot twice, but I can never know who they count it as having voted for. True anonymous verification is a system where I can identify my vote, but no one can determine how I voted.
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Sue the state for making a decision? If you're going to die, die bold.
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.
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I've really got to ask - how hard is it to write a machine that tallies clicks? Seriously?
I've been writing code in several languages for going on 9 years, and I've got to tell you, counting votes sounds like something we did in CS 102.
Of COURSE it should be open source. Of COURSE any shmoe should be able to audit the code. Because - and I've gotta tell ya, I'm not the greatest dev that ever lived - there are about a million people in CA th
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Las Vegas manages to operate thousands of video gambline machines that are far more complicated mechanically speaking(it has to dispense stuff) that have to pass extremely rigorous standards, there are millions of ATM machines that have incredibly low error rates.
Sure, we could build it. It'd likely be m
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This would only be true if Diebold wanted to make voting machines that work properly. They don't.
10% Failure Rate. (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Funny -- No, I was Serious! (Score:2)
It is important to note also that these standards are voluntary and as such are the "upper bound" for the practical rules, and many states ignore them altogether. Few if any exceed the standard, especially when it c
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.
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This is facilitated by a procedural approach of mandatory on-site auditing of the vote with the paper ballots.
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* Open specifications
* validation and verification of all equipment and procedures concerning the vote
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.
I would go even further and demand that both an English language and a formal specification that are open. That way you can validate the formal speciifcation against the English language version, and you can formally verify software code against the formal specification. There are plenty of independent systems that would allow such formal verification of code to be done, and machine checked. Sure, this requires more work to write a formal specification and to write code that can be verified against it... b
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I hear ya. Voting, is actually VERY easy. Anyone that shows interest, can get an absentee ballot.
This is fuming me a little..in that down here in LA (mostly about New Orleans area), the st
Mass Diebold request blocked (Score:5, Informative)
--
The proper use of a silicon ballot: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Pre-Hacking (Score:2)
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And this is a bad thing for the public... HOW?
Because Democrats have an equal or superior history with vote fraud; the effort is obviously incomplete without 'blue teams' to try hacking them as well. =)
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.
MOD COWARD UP (Score:2)
in the sea of all the depressing news in the US... (Score:2)
I now think there may be a non-zero amount of sane people still left. before, I really did think the number WAS zero.
I now have new hope for democracy to RETURN to the US.
Re:in the sea of all the depressing news in the US (Score:2)
Return? It would have had to have been here in the first place. The US was under the UK with no say, and then it was formed under a republic, which is referred to as a "representative democracy" but which really means that a select few are in control. Beyond that, the whole thing is really under the control of the people with the money to buy the government's interest. Democracy? It's a kleptocracy.
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.
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If source cannot be produced (or it does not compile to the same machine code present on the voting machines) then those responsible should be rounded up and tried for treason.
No, no, no; the constitution strictly defines and limits "treason" for compelling reasons. Maintain a sense of proper proportion. I'll settle for having the corporation and its officers convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges (both criminal felony and civil damages); and any elected or appointed officials who facilitated such sh
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...?
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Perhaps I'm getting too tin-foil-hatlike here... But you're overlooking the fact that, in my opinion at least, the two party system has an inherent interest in a system that can be fudged one way or the other. Even relatively sane, simple mandates like checking for a valid ID at the poling station get shut down. The less sinister thing that you're overlooking is that a majority of the citizens in the US don't seem to care that much. We've got small percentages of
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Those laws are often struck down as unconstitutional, and for good reason. If you are an American citizen who doesn't have an ID (which you cannot constitutionally be required to own as a direct result of our right to privacy), you should still be able to vote. More practically, from a statistical viewpoint, people with lower incomes and the elderly are surprisingly likely to not have IDs. You might say, "
Because ID cards expire (Score:2)
The reason that many elderly lack ID cards is because the state issued ID cards that they have are expired. Expired ID cards are not accepted as identification.
If you live at the same address, are the same height, same gender, and eye color - why do you need a new ID card?
Why the heck ID cards expire is a good question. Anyone have an answer? I always wondered why. Change of appearance is a poor reason. I could grow a beard and dye my hair the day after getting an ID card. Is it because they are worri
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"Vote early... vote often"
That is another consequence of not requiring ID: There is nothing stopping you from casting your ballot in a dozen precincts all over the general location where you live... depending on
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Or perhaps, while I'm behind the curtain, I'll just run a utility to modify the contents of the hard drive, adjusting all the voters votes previous to mine.
Ok... ok... your system has a safegaurd in that people can verify their votes after the fact online. S
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As for the -time- taken voting. Hardly. The whole thing would be fairly automated. 3 or 4 minutes would be ample time, and not suspicious at all.
As for opportunity to hack the CD your assuming they give you the live CD right there on the spot. Whereas I assumed I'd get it in the mail.
Giving it to me on the spot certainly could help elminate the opportunity to hack it. But it does underscore another vulnerability - the entire system goes to shit if someone somewhere can swap a few infected live CDs into the
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"Simple" is not the same as "easy" (Score:2)
It amazes me that the US can't get their elections done right. They have the technology to power the worlds most important financial systems [...] Or am I over looking something here...?
Today's piece on the largest financial data breach in history [slashdot.org], perhaps?
HTH. HAND.
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One minor nit... This is a bad idea because it makes buying and selling votes more reliable. With a scheme like this, the vote-buyer can verify that the vote-seller really followed instructions before payment is made. As it is now, vote-buying is unreliable (at the retail level) because the buyer can't tell if they got what they paid for.
But, overall there are plenty of good
That doesn't quite fit my definition of "simple" (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps you might not have heard the story of the king and the toaster [netinteraction.com]?
This may not be quite that bad, but the point still stands: Don't use more technology than is needed to solve the problem. In this case, it's much simpler than you suggest:
Re:That doesn't quite fit my definition of "simple (Score:2)
My wife is an election judge, and has done the paper and pencil thing on municipal elections where there was just three options to count. Even then, it took her and the team of voting judges nearly thr
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Yes, you are. One thing that many people forget when comparing voting systems to banking systems is that voting is anonymous. There is (supposed to be) no way to determine how a person voted once their ballot has been cast. In particular, voters do not take anything away from the polls that indicates how they voted. This is to prevent situations were people are coerced into voting a certain way -- if there is no way to prove they voted for a particular person, the
Nice to see (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.ss.ca.gov/executive/bio.htm [ca.gov]
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Go Debra go! So nice to have a real, live she-geek in public office!
They'll "study the software inside the machines"? (Score:3, Insightful)
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This situation is unacceptable in critical systems' embedded software. Not only is the source subject to audit, but the entire compilation and installation process is as well.
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?
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Microsoft, who sells into a huge and varied market, has to worry about copyright and competitors swiping their intellectual property. Diebold deals with a much smaller customer base which is easily audited. Do you really think that county election officials are going to risk buying their voting machine s/w on the black market?
It is not uncommon for vendors to provide the source code for critical systems with embedded
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Now what if
Unless the vote is on paper... (Score:2)
You can verify the reference machine all you want, but unless all the millions of Californians are voting on that one machine then there's not much point to verifying it.
If you want your vote to count, vote on paper.
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As I've mentioned before when this issue is raised, computers should only be used for electronic ballot preparation. The actual ballot which you use for casting your vote should be prepared in the voting booth, and be done using OCR characters and/or a bar code (or something simple but easy for a voter to evaluate). At that point, who cares what company has actually designed the equipment for the vote processing?
You can establish standards for both
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We'll keep our kooks, you keep yours and we will both be happy. I hope.
Waaaaay off topic, I know (Score:2, Funny)
Boy, I'd like to see a shoji screen of these four seasons!
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
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We fixed it for you. Quit complaining.
I can remember when you couldn't see the Hollywood sign from downtown LA most days. And in Cleveland, you couldn't see downtown from five miles away.
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.
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In the absence of federal leadership, get your state to talk to other, adjacent populous states, kinda like this [rggi.org].
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Your post (to me
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As I understand it, Audi stopped selling their TT for model year 2006 because it didn't meet California smog requirements and it would have been too expensive to make it meet the requirements. Audi was getting ready to redesign the TT for 2007 (which would fit the requirements) so they decided to not sell the 2006 in California.
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ON the other hand...feel free in many other states, to be able to modify your car pretty muc
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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
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And just because a car has has lower mpg doesn't mean it won't meet emissions requirements. There is some correlation, but some engines do burn fuel
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Like I said before, stop blaiming California, and accept responsibility for your own actions (or lack thereof) in this case.
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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.
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The air is minty fresh where I live... with a hint of lemon salt.
Allow me to help you out... you refer to California as "the land of fruits and nuts" or "the left coast" and you decry our no-smoking restaurants on a regular basis.
You, on the other hand, live in Utopia, where milk and honey and nutmeg butter flow in an unbroken stream past the toes of the colossus that is M. Jodi Rell. Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman hold the banner of progress w
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Hey, at least now they can see through the air to see other objects. Talk to someone who lived in LA before they got strict with their emissions regulations in the 80s; I doubt they'll tell you that merely translucent air is anything but a vast improvement.
Seriously, CA's emissions standards have been highly effective. Yes there's still pollution -- seen when flying into LAX as a big stinky brown cloud floating over downtown obscuring the skyscrapers,
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You forgot Awards Season, TV Season, and Riot Season.
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Sorry, the smoking ban isn't about patrons, it's about employees. As a person with money who wants to buy food (or whatever) you have a choice of where to go. But as a person who has to make a living without skills, your average food service worker would have two choices without such a law: elevated
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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Bloc? the Parti Quebecois (a provincial political party. the Bloc is a federal party.) took a big hit in the provincial election, but nothing has happened with the Bloc, AFAIK.
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