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)."
Good work (Score:5, Insightful)
Now how long until Harris is sued?
Re:Good work (Score:5, Interesting)
You means commits suicide by shooting himself once in the heart and twice in the head?
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They gave her a sex change too? Whoever THEM are, THEM are good!
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Herself
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Re:Good work (Score:4, Insightful)
I am left without mod points now. Dang. This is a -1 Troll post if ever there was one.
The problem with "e"voting is you are using what has to be a complex technical system for something done for hundreds or thousands of years in a simple way, either by hand counting or counting slips of paper. If you believe in the KISS principle this is one case where the solution might be not to play as the lives of an entire country are to blame.
Even if you screw up micro controller code and overexposing someone to radiation in the famous incident it's only *one* person, not a country.
Re:Good work (Score:5, Interesting)
If your belief is that technology can only make things worse, then you are, by definition, a Luddite.
This is simply untrue. The fact that technology cannot solve one particular problem does not make you a Luddite.
The integrity of voting is built on it being transparent and understood by all. Everything which stands between the average voter and a thorough understanding of the voting process must be eliminated.
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No, that's the other party affiliation that kills people. This party affiliation's enemies usually end up having their hypocricies exposed, and failing those, have something embarassing manufactured to be expossesd...
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Well, at least the government can't frame her on a rape charge.
"because it is built on MS Access." (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there's your problem right there....why didn't they use a (real) database?
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.
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You may joke but this was actually suggested in one company I worked at, to replace FoxPro with Excel, after all it is just a table.
I kid you not.
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Precisely.
Repeat after me ... "sir, you hired me because I know more about computers than you do. Please let me make these decisions and help you make more money by doing it the best I can. If I'm wrong and it doesn't work out for you, deal with me at that point. Until then, please let me do the job you hired me to do."
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Oh yes, plus one million insightfuls to you, sir.
I quit a job over this kind of thing. What it comes down to is that they either hired you for your expertise and respect it or they don't, and if they don't someone else will. No matter where I go I'm constantly fighting the what/how battle: You tell me what, I decide how. Mostly there is no problem with this if I begin with a non-confrontational explanation of why it has to be that way.
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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.
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Next thing you know they'll say the code was written in javascript or visual basic...
Not all of it was written in Visual Basic - just the GUI.
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Javascript, of course
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Glad to see one person got it!
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No, it wasn't in *visual* basic.
Re:"because it is built on MS Access." (Score:4, Insightful)
Because they couldn't figure out how to get MSSQL working, they couldn't afford Oracle, the very thought of "open source" scared the crap out of them (so no MySQL/PostgreSQL), and all the other proprietary databases are (apparently) even worse than Access.
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An Access front-end with SQL Server acting as the back-end can work just fine for relatively simple applications, but the developer still has to know what he's doing. For a simple data entry and maintenance application, I can throw something together in just an hour or two. It's less effort to do simple stuff with Access, and less effort to do complicated stuff with, say, C#. So, right tool for the right job and all that.
But storing data in the Access database, and having it accessed by multiple users is al
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Looks like that's all the effort they put into this shite software, too.
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So Access is like HyperCard.
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Because it would interfere with their antivirus software [xkcd.com], of course.
Re:"because it is built on MS Access." (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like the client had requirements. No consultant in the modern day would go in there and say this is the best solution. They must of been told they had Access already and this was all they could use.
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They must of been told
What does it mean for a person to "of been" told something?
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When you are being paid for work by a client, they dictate what the work is at the end of the day. They are paying you. You can give suggestions etc, but if they want Access or only know Access, you are going to use Access. You are being "told" this is the only option and you use it. This has happened on countless clients.
Eggcorn (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. You've been using an eggcorn [wikipedia.org]. By far one of the most common ones in use, but every bit as nonsensical as the others found in this sampling:
===============
Allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong.
In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go.
===============
My intent isn't to insult, just to encourage people to think about any phrase that doesn't actually make sense.
Re:"because it is built on MS Access." (Score:4, Informative)
If this is the software I'm thinking it is, the first iteration of it was developed by a (very) small business in Arkansas in the early 1990's, and Accenture's involvement is at the end of a chain of acquisitions over the years. That company developed it for very small customers (individual counties in Arkansas). Access was chosen mostly because the owner of the company was hacking out the software himself and his choice of tools was always whatever Microsoft was promoting the hardest at the time. Regardless of the motivation, that probably was not too terrible a choice given the requirements, the nature of the data being managed, and the technology of the day. At the time Shelby County, TN became a customer (mid-90's) the data store would have been SQL Server, with Access being used for client-side data entry and reporting.
So now you know. If it's the software I'm thinking it is. I can't imagine why it has been kept in that form for so long, though.
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Same reason code always stays on the same platform:
If it aint broke, don't fix it.
Ambiguous, or poorly written code behaviors, not making sense to anyone else, poorly documented requirements, requires the genus who built it. And that person seldom wants to revisit / be reminded of WTF code. Heck, they seldom remember their code before.
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If it aint broke, don't fix it.
An aphorism best applied to things that aren't broken.
Re:"because it is built on MS Access." (Score:4, Funny)
Accenture is commonly known as Accidenture.
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Actually, they are commonly known as Arthur Andersen.
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Andersen Consulting (which later became Accenture) and Arthur Andersen (a now-defunct major accounting firm) were effectively separate companies for a very long time prior to the renaming and the dissolution of Arthur Andersen.
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Luckily it it isn't Aperture.
This will be really interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been a whole lot of election shenanigans in this country and in Canada. And while I don't doubt both parties have done this sort of thing, and do this sort of thing, it seems to be the Republicans who've been the biggest culprits these past 10 years or so.
Personally, I really like the anonymous electronic voting systems based on David Chaum's digital cash work. They look like they might be independently verifiable by third parties and anonymous at the same time [wikipedia.org].
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>>>it seems to be the Republicans who've been the biggest culprits these past 10 years or so.
In my state (see post below) it was the Democrats that rammed-through these machines. The Repubs/Libertarians were opposed to the e-voting due to ease-of-vote hijacking. So..... why do you think the Republicans are the biggest culprits when they were the ones opposed to the idea? Sources please.
Re:This will be really interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
How about the President of Diebold quoted as saying they were "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Election_Solutions [wikipedia.org]).
If that isn't a obvious Freudian slip indicating their conflict of interest with the Republican party, I don't know what the fuck is. Yes, the Dems liked the idea of e-voting but this was before the Repubs perverted the realization. The Republican party objected, then quickly found a way to get their unregulated business-connected fucktard "partners" to trample all over the process and game the system in their favor. Yeah, letting businesses run wild and do whatever they want is a REALLY GOOD thing for this country. NOT.
Re:This will be really interesting (Score:5, Informative)
You're welcome. What the fuck is REPUTABLE? Someone who you have personally dealt with? Someone everyone can trust? No such person exists universally, nice Straw Man.
But anyway, here are a bunch of more reports of this with SOURCES, if you don't think the Wikipedia article is correct. As far as them being REPUTABLE, that's open to opinion. Any random asshole YOU quote from won't be REPUTABLE to me. So there.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm [commondreams.org]
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/03/diebolds-political-machine [motherjones.com]
http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/30/technology/election_diebold/ [cnn.com]
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Diebold_Election_Systems [sourcewatch.org]
Your ears must hurt from having your fingers "rammed" in them so hard. You're welcome.
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A REPUTABLE source is one who is in good standing with the puppet masters of the Republican Party. Obviously.
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As much as I recall, the quote itself was never disputed, just denial of any sinister intent. The fact that the guy gave $100k to the Bush campaign and sent out fund raising letters for them would seem in line with that.
Re:This will be really interesting (Score:5, Informative)
I'm on the conservative/libertarian side of things most (but not all) days, but the quote is real, assuming you accept the NY Times as a source.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/machine-politics-in-the-digital-age.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm [nytimes.com]
The context is important; O'Dell wrote this as a Bush fundraiser in a fundraising letter, not in his role as Diebold president. That said, reverse it, if he'd been a Kerry/Obama backer and done the same; Republicans would be rightly very suspicious.
We've had issues with robocalls and funding irregularities in Canada, but not, as far as I am aware, any significant credible allegations of ballot or vote fraud.
In the last couple of elections, where I live, we've used paper ballots (filled out with a pen) sometimes coupled with optical scan. (The disabled can have someone assist them.) This provides a surprisingly useful audit trail. (e.g. consider a box filled with ballot papers all marked for one candidate, all with a very unusual pen colour. Don't laugh, it's happened in places like Texas).
Voters are enumerated, door-to-door by multi-party teams of volunteers. To vote you have to show photo id. Felons and prisoners are able to vote; we think it's unfair to deny politicians the vote. I strongly suspect the level of voter fraud and machine politics is substantially lower than the US; history generally seems to bear this out.
The Canadian system is far from perfect, though I'm inclined to think, like the banking system up here, it's somewhat superior to the current US system.
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To be fair, anyone that wants to be a politician should probably be banned from voting (among other things)
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I'm on the conservative/libertarian side of things most (but not all) days,
Full disclosure: I'm the same way, but on the other side of the spectrum. So right off the top, you're my kind of conservative: not rigid & ideological: that is a bad thing to have coming from either side.
We've had issues with robocalls and funding irregularities in Canada, but not, as far as I am aware, any significant credible allegations of ballot or vote fraud.
That used to be the case, but it gives me no joy to show that you're probably wrong on this one [thestar.com]:
Re:This will be really interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
It's because whenever I see an article about these problems cropping up, about 9 times out of 10 it's the Republicans who are favored. Now, it could be article bias, but I don't think so. There are many interesting links as well. Diebold's CEO promising to deliver votes to the Republicans is one. But there are others.
Democrats make certain kinds of back room deals with certain businesses. The entertainment industry (for example) is a big one. But Republicans make certain kinds of back room deals with certain other kinds of businesses. The voting machine industry deals feels more Republican to me. Mostly local deals not directly involving the creation of new laws. Democrats tend towards larger scale things that are directly related to political issues.
Re:How "odd" the percentages match (Score:4, Interesting)
Not saying reporting should be anything but objective, I would disagree with anyone who says it should, I just find it interesting that nobody takes this concept that most journalists are democrats as a possible indicator of something more than their bias.
If 90% of astronomers believed there's no alien life (hypothetically- I don't know what they believe), I would think there's something to it, since they report on the going-ons out there. *points at space*
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Neither are the Democrats. I really dislike both parties. And I find Obama to be a very disappointing president, though not for the reasons most Republicans complain about. He has an absolutely abysmal track record on civil liberties. Secret drone extra-judicial assassinations are only the half of it.
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So you are one of the people that voted for him thinking there would be change? And will likely vote for him again because...
Re:This will be really interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
And will likely vote for him again because...
...the alternative is a fucking nightmare.
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Amen.
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...the alternative is a fucking nightmare.
WHICH alternative?
You realize there's more than one?
And your excuse is why the country is in this mess, voting for a known bad actor instead of a third party.
DERP I KNOW OBAMA MURDERDRONED MY MOM, BUT ROMNEY!!!
So don't vote for Romney. Vote third party. Or stop pretending you want to make things better.
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>So don't vote for Romney. Vote third party. Or stop pretending you want to make things better.
Voting for a third party is voting for the guy you hate the most.
That's the reality. Until we get rid of this current voting system we have and replace it with another, that's what we've got. Other countries have voting systems that let multiple parties thrive, but our system is a winner-take-all two party system.
--
BMO
Re:This will be really interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Voting for a third party is voting for the guy you hate the most.
Only if one is voting from a swing state; if your state is historically/reliably loyal to D or R (at the exclusion of the other), voting third-party is a smart and responsible thing to do.
Re:This will be really interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This will be really interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Denmark too! In fact, Denmark is so close to being broke that its government bond interest rate has overflowed and gone NEGATIVE!
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Government creates freedoms, it doesn't take them away. I'm free to walk down the street without the fear of getting mugged in most places because We The People have pooled our resources via the governnment to make the streets safe. I have the freedom to be unafraid of acquiring a large number of infectious diseases that my parents and grandparents did not have the freedom to ignore, because We The People pooled our resources to fund medical research into t
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Because the alternative is MUCH WORSE. Yes, let's get back to the system and methods used to utterly destroy the US and World Economies, and turned the US from possibly the most admired and greatest nation in the world to the almost universally-hated Pariah it is today.
They have DESTROYED AMERICA as we knew it. Keep up the good work! The rest of the world isn't quite bankrupt yet.
Accenture wrote it? (Score:5, Funny)
Their consultants are terrible, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.
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Could you shed some light to why Accenture is so terrible ? Slashdot's search didn't return any interesting links.
Re:Accenture wrote it?(Mod Me Up,Good Info herein) (Score:5, Informative)
They built a MS Access DB for the front-end and used SQL for the back-end, this is industry standard for small business clerical solutions and is dirt cheap to do.
Microsoft has a nasty habit of removing functions out of DLL's to provide security, or changing their behavior so code breaks in ways nobody notices. Either you patch and you have a reliability problem, or you don't and get a security problem.
It's very likely the town decided they wanted to that setup because it's easy to exploit.
Where Accenture comes in as being a boatload of fail, is that they didn't build ANY database validation or security into their system. It's RIDICULOUSLY simple to set up several blob's for each site, set up security-per-blob by site logon, set up kiosks under guest accounts in AD that have access to just their blob, have the data aggregate into those blob's, then run a report to tally, and here's the fail part, AND ANOTHER REPORT TO CONFIRM OBVIOUS MISTAKE ON THE ROLLS A MONKEY COULD SPOT ARE NOT HAPPENING!
Voters voting twice, the number of votes on a field being counted several times, data field error checking to ensure valid characters are in a class...the STANDARD stuff. And we aren't talking about egregious or eccentric databasing here, we're talking about plain old simple databasing; field 1 is a name, field 2 is an address, field 3 is a telephone number, field 4 is the representative they wanted to vote for and so on and so on.
If Accenture wants to come clean, give us the design document the were handled to perform the contract, in fact, I'd FOIA that sucker in light of this offense.
IMO Windows has too large of an attack surface to be used for this; you need something with a minimal attack surface that can be updated and set up as needed. You need either Windows Server Core, or Linux. Heck, even Mac OSX would be better suited than XP or 7.
Re:Accenture wrote it? (Score:5, Informative)
I only interviewed with them a long time ago, but here's what I saw that made me not want to work there, and should give you an idea of why they suck:
1. The whole company is structured as "move up or move out". You have to get promoted at a particular pace, or you're fired. And yes, there are fewer promotions available than there are people on the team, so your coworkers are your competitors.
2. There's a specific hierarchy and pay scale for techies which is kept separate and unequal from the hierarchy for everyone else. All techies are officially second class citizens, and there is no way for developers, no matter how much they contribute, to move anywhere beyond either a more senior developer position, or a front-line manager of developers.
3. The pay was way lower than standard for somebody with my skill set and experience. You get what you pay for.
Basically, they're the epitome of a corporate whale that provides very little real value while raking in tons of cash from big companies and government.
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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)
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I have a friend who recently got a job at Accenture.
When I heard, I sent him a text with just one word: Accidenture
And since blackboxvoting seems to be /.ed
Here's the coral cache link:
http://www.bbvforums.org.nyud.net/forums/messages/7659/82111.html [nyud.net]
You'll find a torrent of the files in the comments
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Still a better name then 'toilet and douche'
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In the case of the integrity of the voting process, what you've described is criminal negligence on the part of the software authors.
--Jeremy
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The fact that they used MS-Access clearly indicates stupidity.
Malice could also play a part here, of course, but I know of no instance where MS-Access is used that doesn't involve stupidity;
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Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity... Doubling, tripling; sounds to me like it could be explained by an untrained operator not receiving feedback that an operation has been completed, and so clicking again on the button which initiates the operation. Combine that extremely plausible scenario with software which doesn't bother to check before re-accumulating totals, and you have a likely explanation.
But that wouldn't correlate with location or party.
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Lord, I wouldn't worry about tinfoil conspiracies, it is straight up incompetence. Their consultants are terrible, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Given the stakes, I'd still be inclined to look at malfeasance. Indeed, if I really wanted to cover my tracks, I'd have "incompetents" build my system.
This needs mirrors and fast, imo (Score:4, Insightful)
For one, the article is /.'d so I cant even read it..
Second, if what she is alleging is correct then yes, it needs to be spread far and wide on the 'net (and off, too, backed up all over) because letting criminals get away with stealing elections is very wrong.
Flame me, mod me down, whatever. But to stand by idly and let people that are evil win is wrong.
If for no other reason... (Score:2)
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A guy in the comments on that page posted this torrent link:
http://burnbit.com/torrent/204972/ESM_2_0_8_23_04_zip [burnbit.com]
torrent link (Score:4, Informative)
Hey if this is against TOS then by all means, remove it.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/7659/ESM_2_0_8_23_04_zip__Burnbit_-82116.unk
hopefully that is a working link to the torrent. its 325meg or so in size.
List, not Voting SW (Score:4, Informative)
This is SW to maintain voter registration, not collect votes. Just because it is broken and shows a voter voted multiple times in an election does not necessarily mean that the voter actually was able to cast multiple votes or that the (independent) voting method (paper or electronic) was flawed.
In Maryland Republicans opposed e-voting (Score:4, Informative)
They were also joined by the MD-LP, because they knew e-voting could be easily hijacked. They felt the existed paper ballots worked just fine. Of course the Democrats have a ~70% majority in the Legislature, so they just rammed it through anyway (as they do with virtually everything). The Repub and Libertarian concerns have been proved correct 12 years later.
Re:In Maryland Republicans opposed e-voting (Score:5, Informative)
"Just rammed it through" def'n: any legislation that passes that you don't like.
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Yeah, after they corrupted the system themselves (or had their business "partners" do it). Self-fulfilling Prophecy, it sounds like to me.
As for ramming stuff through, that's the technique required when dealing with assholes.
This made me laugh (Score:4, Insightful)
I know a bunch of county elections IT people in Colorado since I work in county IT (and nervously checked TFA hoping it wasn't one of our backups that got released). Let me tell you, if you think IT is stressful, add politics and see what happens. To anyone else about to start scrutinizing this Accenture crap: welcome to the party. We have to deal with horrible, over-costed, "best of the worst" third-party solutions on a daily basis because there simply aren't any alternatives.
Let me tell you: if you were to start an open-source project for vote-counting you would have thousands of fed-up county contributors overnight.
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Let me tell you: if you were to start an open-source project for vote-counting you would have thousands of fed-up county contributors overnight.
What's stopping you guys then?
Join the dark side, we have cookies (Score:5, Informative)
... that votes are somehow being recorded twice and sometimes three times for certain voters in the voter history report
To me, this sounds like someone's join isn't all that unique. Let's say you have two voters, Joe Smith, at two different addresses, that both voted. If you join a registration list with a vote list, on first and last name and not address, you actually end up with 4 combinations instead of 2, for twice the votes. Other things to check are overlapping effective/terminate date ranges, and compound primary key fields. Rookie mistakes, but big consequences.
Torrent link (Score:5, Informative)
Mirrors (Score:3, Informative)
Since BBV is in bad shape, here's links to some mirrors.
In the original forum thread, a poster linked a torrent for the actual software: http://burnbit.com/torrent/204972/ESM_2_0_8_23_04_zip [burnbit.com]
I don't see a torrent for the notes archive, so here's a magnet link. Sorry if it stops working:
On the dangers of voting machines (Score:5, Informative)
To sum up the above link: An interesting phenomenon has occurred in every state of this year's Republican primaries. Votes appear to be flipped away from other candidates in favor of Romney, with a 99% correlation to precinct size. Although votes are "canvassed" (checked) after each primary, the methods used are primarily designed to detect vote stuffing, rather than vote flipping.
This phenomenon has recently been shown to be absent if you can get your hands on poll tapes from individual machines, rather than from voting tabulators (machines that count the totals from the various voting machines).
Voting machines are just scary stuff. More so since poll tapes are not always made readily available. Thankfully, a bill was recently introduced that would require poll tapes from individual machines (not just tabulators) to be made available by the next day following an election.
Re:On the dangers of voting machines (Score:4, Insightful)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByJAC-sfXwumdkE4d0Y2eWtURTZ2eDM5RmlLc3ZhQQ/edit?pli=1 [google.com]
There's been major election fraud to prop up Romney and reduce the vote counts of others (but usually Ron Paul), and this is one of the things that the RNC is being sued over. This is also why Ron Paul has won several caucuses when the primaries (with the rigged machines) said he didn't win. It's much harder to falsify a bunch of people actually showing up to elect delegates.
If you're wondering who Bev Harris is (Score:5, Informative)
Highly recommend watching "Hacking Democracy".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVTXbARGXso [youtube.com]
What I see so far (Score:4, Interesting)
It's basically a bunch of monstrous Access databases. Unfortunately, most (all?) of the VBA code is in databases that have been compiled to .mde files. There's no simple way that I know of to get usable source code back from those, which is unfortunate, since that's probably where most of the damning evidence would be found. However, you can view table definitions and data, form and report designs, queries, etc. Fun fact: you can bypass the initial login by just holding the left shift key as you open voter.mde.
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There's at least one commercial service that for taking MDEs back to MDBs with VBA source, so it is certainly doable, if not simple.
Tick Tock (Score:2)
This being /., someone will find a way. If only for bragging rights, so be it.
Your post sadly will not reach five years ago, where that would have been true.
Pearls of Wisdom from 6+ years in the field. (Score:5, Interesting)
The recommendation and rationale goes like this... The person I trust is not necessarily the person you would trust therefore we need transparency. No system can be secured against its administrators therefore we need transparency over security.
We must be able to verify four things. 1) Who can vote 2) Who did vote 3) Chain of custody 4) Vote count
Failing any of these points our elections are simply staged theater. Right now, we're failing ALL these points. No electronic system can be verifiable. Can't be done. Even under a paper system its difficult to put checks in place and to have mechanisms where a single voter or group of voter can raise a concern (even an honest mistake) and have it taken care of. A botched election is notoriously hard to clean up. Especially because recounts can and have been rigged. Litigating election issues is nearly impossible. The integrity of the election cycle must be maintained so no voter off the street and even most candidates can't get an issue in court with enough time to change the outcome of an election.
Therefore. *Most* Long term Election Integrity activists have come to support this basic starting principal: "Voter Marked Hand Counted Paper Ballots, Counted at the polls, on election night, no matter how long it takes, in full public view before all those who want to witness the count and before the ballots are moved and chain of custody issues arise."
Now. That handles points 3 and 4 but to be honest. 1 and 2 are tricky. They kinda require databases at this point because unlike the pool of poll workers this system don't scale well with the population. Bev's been finding voter histories have been erased in several counties in Tennessee. This is important because if a registered voter hasn't voted in a while then as part of house keeping (the person may have died or moved) they eventually get purged from the voter rolls. So someone(s) in Tennessee is erasing peoples' vote history so they get purged, show up at the polls and can't vote. There's already been some court rulings to handle this. The point is we need to remain vigilant and we need things transparent so we CAN be vigilant. We don't need computers to solve everything. We need the public to relearn how to do their civic duty and to do that civic duty.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't particularly care what some partisan hack
Careful, you sound like one of those partisan hacks yourself, what with your shooting the messenger and all.
--Jeremy
Meta-shot (Score:2)
Careful, you sound like one of those partisan hacks yourself, what with your shooting the messenger and all.
He's complaining about ALL partisans, not just this one.
Your own shot is far off the mark.
Re: (Score:2)
Careful, you sound like one of those partisan hacks yourself, what with your shooting the messenger and all.
Because pointing out and decrying partisanship is itself partisan, or something.../sarcasm