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Fri 25 Jul, 2003 12:43 pm
'General News' is "a place to discuss the ever changing world around us".
Sometimes, the changes are just very small:
Quote:Electronic Voting System is Vulnerable to Tampering
Computer Researchers Find Critical Flaws in Popular Software Produced for U.S. Elections
The software believed to be at the heart of an electronic voting system being marketed for use in elections across the nation has weaknesses that could easily allow someone to cast multiple votes for one candidate, computer security researchers at The Johns Hopkins University have determined.
The researchers reached this conclusion after studying computer code believed to be for Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems' electronic voting equipment. The code, which included modifications made through 2002, was posted anonymously to a public Web site earlier this year. During 2002, approximately 33,000 Diebold voting stations, which allow ballots to be cast via a 15-inch touch-screen monitor, were used in elections in Georgia, California, Kansas and other locations, according to a company news release. On July 21, the company finalized an agreement with the state of Maryland to provide up to $55.6 million in touch-screen voting technology and related services.
But after analyzing tens of thousands of lines of programming code purportedly used to make this electronic voting system work, three researchers from the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins, aided by a computer scientist at Rice University in Houston, have expressed serious concerns about the voting system. The researchers said they uncovered vulnerabilities in the system that could be exploited by an individual or group intent on tampering with election results. In particular, they pointed to the use of a "smart card," containing a tiny computer chip, that each eligible voter receives. The card, inserted into the electronic voting machine, is designed to ensure that each person casts only one ballot. But the researchers believe a voter could hide a specially programmed counterfeit card in a pocket, withdraw it inside the booth and use it to cast multiple votes for a single candidate.
"A 15-year-old computer enthusiast could make these counterfeit cards in a garage and sell them," said Avi Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins and one of the researchers involved in the study. "Then, even an ordinary voter, without knowing anything about computer code, could cast more than one vote for a candidate at a polling place that uses this electronic voting system."
link to
complete article
at the 'Johns Hopkins University - Office of News and Information' - website.
Sometimes I think we should go back to the old fashioned way of gathering in town hall and raising our hands to vote.
But not all those old people in Palm Beach can raise their hands!
Well, since about 20 years I'm counting votes - at local, county, state, federal and European elections (= sometimes 20+ plus different parties on the ballot sheet, plus the candidates).
This always worked very well.
Electronic voting is one thing I don't understand.
Voting machines, in general, I don't understand.
It is said that these methods are used in countries with high illiteracy rates. I don't know why.
What I see is that a machine -electronic or whatever- is used in these cases as a substitute for CITIZENS, like Walter and millions of others, who do the important job of watching and ensuring that elections are not rigged, that the will of the population is reflected and prevails.
fealola, If those old folks in Florida can manage to play 15 bingo cards at the same time, raising their hands is no problem. LOL c.i.
LOL! You're right! And I forgot about the bocce balls!
fbaezer wrote:What I see is that a machine -electronic or whatever- is used in these cases as a substitute for CITIZENS, like Walter and millions of others, who do the important job of watching and ensuring that elections are not rigged, that the will of the population is reflected and prevails.
I don't know your political leanings, but I wonder whether you would have complete faith in election results counted by someone from the other party. And it seems to me that the issue raised here was the ability of voters to cast fraudulent votes, not a question of the ability of machines to tabulate results. We don't need people we can trust to count the votes, we need people we can trust to cast them. My desire to see my candidate win is never so strong that I would destroy the system to see him win. I suspect that there is an increasing number of people in the US who do not feel that way. That is the problem, not what machines we use to vote or count votes, but the willingness of some to do anything to get what they want.
Scrat wrote:I don't know your political leanings, but I wonder whether you would have complete faith in election results counted by someone from the other party.
So it is/was done this way in the USA?
Here, in Europe (Germany), it is done differently: in every voting district there a "counting commitee", chair is (normally) a civil servant, members are from all parties. And since there are two "shifts", some 12 persons are counting (and "cross counting" = every vote is at least counted [normaly] four different persons from four different parties).
Scrat,
I come from a country which had a decades old tradition of rigged elections.
When I was young, there were such inventions as "the carrrousel" (PRI groups of voters who went to different voting polls and showed IDs with different names), "the pregnant urn", (in which the ballot box had PRI votes before the election started); the "crazy mouse" (voting polls in zones where opposition was strong, moved from place to place during the day) or the "taco" (a PRI voter is given several ballots).
How was that stopped, and how did we achieve democracy? By a long struggle from opposition parties, and some generational change in the PRI. Reform after reform. Lock upon lock of legality was put on elections. They are the most fiscalized and scrutinized event in Mexican political life.
They are not organized by the government, but by a citizens' institute; voting credentials are checked and re-checked (now, in fact, they're the only ID banks accept); officers at polling booths are chosen at random (and all parties scrutinize it).
Most important of all, in every polling booth, besides the voting officials, there is a representative of every party and every candidate, to verify that everyone who votes has the right to vote, has not voted before and votes in freedom; and that all votes are counted and accounted for.
With that history of electoral suspicion, it is of no wonder that one looks with suspicion at machines. 0.1% error is too much for me. Counting and cross counting, and having different types of citizens' locks is good for me.
(And I must add I belong to the lesser suspicion-prone minority).
fbaezer - And how do we stop voting fraud in a culture where many states have laws PROHIBITING asking for identification from a voter. When I vote, they ask me for my name and address, check to see that these match what is on their list, and ask (ASK!) if I would please sign a form (this is an option, not mandatory). Then I vote.
How many times could I vote if I chose to? Imagine if I enlisted some like-minded individuals from different areas of my city and we each made a list of people we knew who were not going to vote. Then we each simply take a name in each precinct and vote multiple times. There's no record of what we've done and very little chance we would be challenged.
I'm sure we could learn something from your country's experience, but I am fairly certain most of us are too lazy and too disinterested to do anything about it.
"As long as you're comfortable, it feels like freedom." - Billy Bragg
I guess it's a problem of "high" federalism.
Here the first electoral reforms were federal, and then came state reforms (each state with it's own citizen's institute to organize local elections). Hence, the state reforms took the federal reform as a blueprint.
Here we use indelible ink, and you MUST show your thumbs before you vote (to make sure you haven't voted before).
If you present an altered ID, the chairman of the polling booth has the duty to arrest you and hand you to the judiciary authorities.
Scat
Before any voting date (community, town, county, state, federal, European), I get a kind of invitation from the voting office of my community, telling we that I can vote at that next election and where my ballot room is.
With this invitation I go there, show my ID-card and vote. (Or send all to the postal voting committee.)
The voting committee has a list of all the persons in their district, including those, who voted by post.
It's completely impossible to double-vote or vote for someone else - and actually, no-one ever tried this.
Walter - I can only tell you that we not only lack such safeguards here, but there are powerful liberal special interests who oppose them at every turn. You want to ask for an ID? You're just trying to scare off black voters! There is no question in my mind that people take advantage of the laxity here and vote multiple times, and I am also convinced that at some level the laxity remains because the fraud is desired.
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