African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List

Security Breaches Sleepover Voting Machines Used in Busby-Bi
Security Breaches for 'Sleepover' Voting Machines Used in Busby/Bilbray Race Invalidated, Decertified Their Use in the Election!
BradBlog.com
Wednesday 14 June 2006

The electronic Diebold voting systems used in the special run-off election last week for California's 50th U.S. House district were effectively 'decertified' and invalidated for use in the election after massive security breaches in the storage of those systems were sanctioned by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters, The BRAD BLOG can now conclude.

Based on the review of several different very specific state and federal requirements, laws and provisions, the unsecured overnight storage of Diebold voting machines and their memory cards in poll workers houses, cars and garages in the days and weeks prior to the closely watched election between Republican Brian Bilbray and Democrat Francine Busby violated several federal and state provisions which, if not followed, would revoke the certification of use for the voting systems in any California election.

In the wake of discussions yesterday with SD County Registrar Mikel Haas, who admitted to The BRAD BLOG that storage in poll workers' cars could not be considered secure, it has now become clear that several violations of certified provisions of use for Diebold voting machines - which have been found and confirmed in the past several months to be highly tamperable by dozens of methods and by the company's own admissions - occurred in last week's race...

When it was discovered last December, after a security examination of Diebold optical scan systems in Leon County, FL, that both op-scan and touch-screen systems made by Diebold could be hacked via their memory cards - due to the presence of so-called "interpreted code" which is banned by federal voting systems standards - both federal and California officials instituted new security requirements concerning their use in elections. The violation of those requirements, as has clearly occurred in the CA-50 race, would effectively nullify their certification for use in the state of California.

Adding fuel to the concerns of the incredibly cavalier statements about the security issues related to this matter by Registrar Haas (read on below) is the fact that just last week, two different elections in an Iowa Republican primary revealed that the popular incumbents - who had both apparently "lost" their races after paper ballots were optically-scanned - had in fact won their races after a subsequent manual hand-count revealed the scanners were programmed incorrectly. Those revelations, along with the details of CA-50 that we have been reporting here, have led non-partisan election watchdog organization VoteTrustUSA to join us in demanding that SD County prove their reported results are accurate by carrying out a full manual hand-count of all paper ballots and "paper trails" in the race.

The National Association of State Elections Directors (NASED) the national body responsible for qualifying voting systems for use on the federal level, issued a warning about the severe tamperability of memory cards back on March 22nd, 2006, after the issue came to light during the December Leon County tests which revealed that exploitation of this vulnerability could be used to flip an election on a Diebold optical scan system. If exploited, the tampering would not be visible to vote tabulation witnesses and no trace of the hack would be left behind save for counting the paper ballots themselves for accuracy.

In another examination by computer security professionals in Emery County, Utah in March, it was discovered that Diebold's touch-screen systems could have their entire election software, operating system and even computer firmware ("BIOS") overwritten in less than two minutes time - no password necessary - should a sing malicious user have unfettered phyiscal access to the system. Such access could then affect every voting machine used across the entire county.


The result of all of this would be that if there had been malicious tampering with these voting systems, no amount of observations of the tabulation would reveal the tampering that had occured inside the machines. Unfortunately, candidate Francine Busby's own statement in regard to this matter, seems to reveal that she is wholly unaware of the incidiousness and invisibility of the points in question here and, as we'll show, the fact that the voting machines, as used in her own election, were in clear violation of the law.

As a blood sample taken at a crime scene and then stored in someone's garage for a week before delivery to the crime lab would be considered "contaminated" on its face - even if there had been no actual tampering to the sample - so must the world's most easily-hackable voting machines be considered as contaminated when such a massive breach of security in the chain of custody has taken place such as sending machines home, unprotected, with poll workers.


In light of the recently discovered concerns about the Diebold systems, the security memo issued by NASED in regard to the vulnerability of the memory cards, states requirements for use of these systems which are quite clear [emphasis ours]:

1. Throughout the life of the voting system, the election official shall maintain control of all memory cards and keep a perpetual chain of custody record for all of the memory cards used with the system. Programmed memory cards shall be stored securely at all times with logged accesses and transfers.

Failure to comply with this addendum negates the voting system's status as a NASED-qualified voting system.
Since NASED-qualification is just one of the many conditions for certification of use of voting machines in California, the failure described above would decertify the systems concurrently on both the federal and California state levels.


As well, the so-called "conditional certification" of Diebold touch-screen systems in California, as issued by Sec. of State Bruce McPherson on February 17th, 2006 also speaks to the memory cards issues. It spells out quite clearly that the "additional security measures" in regard to those memory cards are "conditions for use in the state of California."

If violated, the systems would no longer be approved for use here. Says McPherson's certification:

Any breach of control over a memory card shall require that its contents be zeroed, in the presence of two election officials, before it can be used again.
While speaking with Haas yesterday, he confirmed once again that indeed both Diebold touch-screen and optical-scan systems, containing their programmed memory cards, were sent home with poll workers in the days and weeks prior to the election.

When asked if storage in garages or cars could be considered as "secure," the SD County Registar responded directly: "No. If kept in the car it would not be considered secure. We would advise them not to do that. No."


And yet, The BRAD BLOG has received, and reported on, several correspondences from nearly half a dozen poll workers who have admitted that they did precisely that.

After reading the special NASED and CA requirements to Haas, and asking him for comment on whether he would therefore confirm that sending these voting machines home with poll workers had nullified their certification for use in the election, he quickly changed his tune.

So I challenged him: "But you admitted that storage in cars could not be considered as 'stored securely at all times,' as the NASED requirements demand," I said.

"No, I didn't," he said.

"Yes, you did," I replied. And after reading back to him his exact quote, he wished to modify his statement to say instead that storage in cars "may be secure, but it's not the most secure."

There are further provisions in California state Elections Code (EC 19251) which require that all voting systems not just be certified by NASED before approval for use in CA, but that they also meet all federal Voting Systems Standards. According to that statute, systems may only be certified if "The system has been both certified by Federal Authorites and meets or exceeds the voluntary standards set by the Federal Election Commission."

But Section 1, paragraph 4.2.2 [WORD] of the FEC Voting System Standards of 2002 specifically ban certification for machines which contain the type of "interpreted code" which Diebold has now been forced to admit is present in all of their electronic voting machines.

"Self-modifying, dynamically loaded, or interpreted code is prohibited" says the pertinent part of those standards which should have been reason enough, upon discovery, for all Diebold systems to have their federal certification immediately revoked by NASED and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

After initially hiding the code from federal testers, Diebold officials were forced to admit in a letter to the CA Sec. of State, that their voting machines do contain that type of code, making them easily tamperable by hackers who might gain a short time of unsupervised physical access to the machines.

"As part of contemplating the AccuBasic changes to the various voting system components," the Diebold letter admits, "we have internally discussed changes to include removing the interpreters and interpreted code."

We could go on. CA Election Code section 19205 states that the secretary of state must declare in his/her certification that the system being certified is "safe from fraud or manipulation." McPherson was unable to make that declaration in Diebold's touch-screen certification, unlike he has done in certification for other California-qualified voting systems.

When McPherson signed the so-called "conditional certification" for these system, he issued a press release crowing about the security requirements which must be met for use of the Diebold system in the state. (The very security requirements which seem to now have been violated in the CA-50 race.)

The press release quoted Haas himself saying:

"I appreciate Secretary McPherson's leadership in establishing what must be the most comprehensive and rigorous certification process in the nation. To comply with new federal and state laws regarding elections, we need a new and different set of tools and Secretary McPherson made sure we got those tools."
While stating appreciation for those "tools" it seems, based on Haas' actions in carrying out last week's CA-50 election and my subsequent conversations with him yesterday, that he's not all that concerned about actually using those "tools" in his elections.


Without getting too much further into the weeds on this issue for the moment, I'll just mention that Haas confirmed the touch-screen systems themselves were sent out without plastic security seal tape over either the power switch or the secondary external PCMCIA slot. That security breach alone would allow a would-be hacker to completely overwrite the entire system in less than two minutes with any software of their liking - with no password necessary - as revealed by the recent Emery County, UT analysis. (That full report, slightly redacted for security sake, has been published here by BlackBoxVoting.org). We've previously discussed the implications of that report in some detail in relation to the now-questionable CA-50 election.

But not to fear! When I asked Haas if that vulnerability alone might give him reason to be concerned about the integrity of the voting systems he then used in last week's election, he rejected the suggestion.

Since a PCMCIA card can be inserted with the necesssary files into that unsealed slot and the power button turned on (all that's needed to overwrite the software) doesn't that vulnerability trouble you, I asked him.

"I don't know.... I think it's highly improbable," he said.

"Improbable?" I wondered. "I'm not asking if it's probable or not, but if it's possible ..."

His reply blew me away: "I don't think so, because you'd have to want to commit a felony, which knocks out most of our poll workers."

(Pausing here for effect to let you think about that.)

When I mentioned several cases were poll workers recently have been indicted for election fraud, he stated he was unaware of any such cases. I pointed him towards three officials recently indicted in Cuyahoga County, OH and explained the situation to him. He was unphased and seemingly uninterested.


"I'm sure they could stick something in the system ... Whether it's detectable or not, I'm pretty sure that it is. But again, you're tampering with election equipment, so it seems unlikely."

As well, Haas refused to recognize that there are millions, and perhaps billions of dollars, riding on such elections. If you were a poll worker who had a few machines in your garage (and it takes just one to potentially invalidate and/or flip the entire system for an entire county) and you were told, "Hey, why don't you leave your garage door open for a half hour and go get some lunch - could be a million dollars in it for ya." Would you take such an offer?

After explaining how the optical-scan systems can be so easily flipped, without a trace left behind except for actually counting the paper-ballots, Haas flippantly replied, "It's a good thing we're not gonna use optical scan anymore." A cavalier reference to San Diego County's plans to go "all touch-screen" for this November's general election.

His responses during our conversation alone are enough for any sane citizen who gives a damn about democracy to declare "No Confidence" in any election run under such conditions by Registrar of Voters, Mikel Haas.

You can now share your feelings about that with him, and Busby both, via this petition calling for a full manual hand-count of the ballots and paper trails in the CA-50 race.

Sounds like they were challanging Democratic voters, since AA's haven't yet figured out that the Dems take them for granted.

Pretty clever, and kind of shady, if true.

More E-Voting Concerns Surface With State Primaries Underway
More E-Voting Concerns Surface With State Primaries Underway
By Catherine Komp
The NewStandard
Saturday 17 June 2006

With another election season around the corner, activists are concerned that electronic voting machines supplied by a handful of American corporations are bug-ridden and easily tampered with, but the road to redress is rough and windy.

From serious security flaws that could allow hackers easy access to electronic voting systems, to routine computer malfunctions and undelivered software, state and local officials are one-by-one joining voter-access groups and computer scientists in questioning the reliability of the three major suppliers of electronic voting machines.

The latest security flaw to be uncovered affects thousands of Diebold touch-screen voting machines across the country. Computer scientist Michael Shamos, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the examiners that tested several companies' machines in Pennsylvania, described the defect as a "misfeature" originally designed by Diebold to let field technicians update machine software quickly.

But, he said, it also would permit someone to upload their own software onto a voting machine with the aim of tampering with election results. Shamos said the problem is the "biggest we've ever seen."

Pennsylvania's primary was Tuesday and Shamos said he would be at the polls monitoring the electronic tabulations.

Last week, voter-access group Black Box Voting (BBV) released the report of Finnish computer scientist Harri Hursti, who discovered the "back door" into Diebold touch-screen systems earlier this spring when examining machines in Emery County, Utah. Bruce Funk, an Emery County clerk of 23 years, had sought independent analysis of his county's machines after he discovered numerous problems and was unsatisfied with Diebold's response.

While this newly exposed security flaw is serious, Shamos said he is not at all surprised because Diebold has "a history of not paying attention to security."

"They just don't get it," Shamos told The NewStandard. "We've had many, many, many discussions. In fact, if you look at their public statements they've made in light of this revelation, it shows that they still don't get it."

While Diebold admits the system is faulty, the company is emphasizing that a human element is needed to compromise an election. Though TNS could not reach Diebold for an interview, spokesperson David Bear told the New York Times: "For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software. I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

Shamos said the long-term fix is to force Diebold to overhaul its machines to make them more secure.

Upon the urgings of Shamos and other machine examiners, the Pennsylvania elections officials directed precincts to minimize security breaches by locking up machines until Election Day. Though these machines are used in numerous states, only California and Iowa, in addition to Pennsylvania, have addressed the problem. Some officials are implementing new administrative rules to compensate for the flaw, for example increasing security where machines are stored and reinstalling software immediately before the election.

John Hedgecoth, deputy secretary of state in Iowa, told TNS his office instructed elections officials in the state's 99 counties to upload a final version of the software into their machines just before Election Day and then seal the machine with the memory card in it. "So we are controlling both the software in the field with a final version that is decided upon by our elections division, and then we're securing the memory card against tampering on Election Day," he said.

Hedgecoth says the industry could be making better machines that are less vulnerable, but he does not believe governments are letting companies off the hook. "Asking a vendor to provide a system that is not susceptible to any conceivable technological attack is unrealistic and we have to recognize that, and I think those of us who work on the government side of this understand that," Hedgecoth said.

Some government officials have concerns other than just the poor construction of electronic voting machines. In preparation for West Virginia's primary earlier this month, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) failed to meet its deadline for delivering "programmable ballots" needed to administer the election in all 55 counties. According to Ben Beakes, chief of staff for Secretary of State Betty Ireland, six counties were not able to use the electronic machines they purchased because they could not test their machines before the May 9 election.

"It created an undue stress and anxiety on the clerks and county election officials throughout the state," Beakes said. "We venture to say that this was the toughest election to prepare for in many years… due to the fact that most counties were not able to adequately prepare and familiarize themselves with the new equipment used in the primary election."

In a complaint filed with the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC), Secretary Ireland accuses ES&S of "vast delays" and "broken promises." She also said the problems are not restricted to West Virginia. Acknowledging that the EAC "probably has no authority to investigate and penalize" the company, Ireland wrote that she has also contacted the state attorney general and the US Justice Department.

Sources interviewed by TNS for this story could not say who exactly is responsible for investigating e-voting companies when there are problems. Because each state has individualized contracts with the manufacturers, officials would likely need to address breaches of that contract with the state attorney general.

Some voters in Arizona, where primaries are not scheduled until September, are hoping a lawsuit will prevent the problems they are seeing in other states. Four plaintiffs have filed suit against Secretary of State Jan Brewer and numerous county officials to stop the implementation of touch-screen machines produced by Diebold and Sequoia Voting Systems, saying the state is wasting millions of dollars on machines that "are not trustworthy or transparent."

The lawsuit claims that both Diebold and Sequoia machines fail to meet state and federal regulations, including disability access standards and state certification. It also argues that despite federal Voluntary Voting System Standards which prohibit the use of "interpretable code" - a type of code that lead to the successful hacking tests conducted by Hursti - and despite knowing about the vulnerabilities of this code, Diebold has failed to change its voting systems.

The lawsuit was filed with the help of Voter Action, a nonprofit voting-access advocacy group, on the heels of similar suits in California, New York and New Mexico brought by the organization on behalf of voters. It cites problems with unusually high numbers of "undervotes" - cases in which a ballot does not record a vote - in the 2004 New Mexico elections on ballots supposedly cast on DRE machines. It also lists lost votes, switched votes and "phantom votes" as serious concerns documented during the same election in New Mexico.

Plaintiffs in Arizona want the state to drop the use of all touch-screen machines in favor of paper ballots that can be scanned and tabulated electronically, as was mandated by neighboring New Mexico's legislature. On the other side of the country, Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., along with the entire Maryland House of Delegates, wants to suspend using the Diebold machines on which the state spent $90 million. Maryland's senate, however, failed to vote on the measure.

Holly Jacobson, co-director of Voter Action, believes paper balloting is the only verifiable way to ensure elections are accurate. In a press statement she said, "Our elections are too important to turn over to private corporations operating with no accountability and to electronic voting systems with a history of errors and security problems."

Re: African-American Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List

Let's hope somebody starts a court case...

This is a topic uppermost in my agenda. We've got to make the politicians give us a free and fair vote - Republican, Democrat, independant.