Do you trust Diebold to elect our President?

[smoothmoniker]

a machine made to record a wrong vote can certainly be made to print an erroneous paper in a box.

[Clodfobble]

No, but... look see, it's like this... I punch a button, it says "Thanks for your vote," and it prints out a receipt saying who I voted for. I look at my receipt, and say, "Ah, yes, that's the name I punched alright," then I walk over to the table, just like I would in the olden days, and drop my little receipt in the lockbox. It basically is the entire system of voting we have now (in non-electronic-voting-machine-areas,) but then there's also a digital version on top of it, to make counting easier and faster unless someone disputes it.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I was always under the impression that paper receipts would be put into a box at the polling station, just like standard paper ballots, to be brought out and counted only if there was a dispute.

Which is part of the requirements in HAVA - the standards for voting machines that was subverted in the early days of the George Jr administration by not funding it. HAVA was to set standards for voting machine - that every PC based voting machine violates aggressively. But then the question about having a backup counting device (ie paper ballots) was discussed back in 2004 such as
Letting the Voter Count

There exists simple fundamental hardware that must exist in any computerized voting machine. No conventional memory cards are acceptable. The memory card can be read only and only written to by incrementing a counter. Only way to write to such a memory chip is to increment the count. And that memory chip cannot be erased; only read repeatedly. No voting machines has this type of memory. Therefore every PC based voting machines will always be flawed.

Remember how you took standardized tests in the early 1960s? You marked paper with a pencil. Then that paper was submitting to a reading machine that graded your answers. That is how responsible locales do electronic voting. You mark the paper ballot. Then take it to a machine that reads your ballot. The machine then tells you which entries are missing or invalid. You can take and correct the ballot, or you can say, "Yes, I did not vote for anyone in that category". Once you say the ballot is correctly read, you tell the machine to count your ballot. And the machine stores all paper ballots in a big tray should a recount be necessary.

The smarter solution also does not have Diebold's et al high profit margins. It meets the intention of HAVA. It cannot print counterfeit ballots. And it provides a reliable source for a recount.

Why is this simple solution not standard everywhere? Why so many posts and questions that only reiterate what was posted four years ago in:
Letting the Voter Count
and in quoted articles in:
Easy Voting Fraud Machines ?

Superior solutions have existed, well, we were using it for standardized school tests originally in the late 1950s.

[mbpark]

TW,

Scantron has existed since the 1960's, and was good enough for every standardized test in school.

Diebold cared about bells and whistles, and it shows, since they used Windows, a desktop productivity OS, and Office, a desktop productivity solution, to attempt to build a secure device.

Unfortunately, since it's a computer, they approached it the wrong way, and also had a ton of government regulations to deal with along the way. They attempted to use standard PC hardware and software to build a tamper-proof system, which is a problem IBM solved in the 1970's with their cryptographic solutions that self-destruct when tampered with.

Their use of a standard PC-based system self-destructed. It would have actually been simpler to use a purpose-based system based off of an embedded processor with a parallel port to hang an Epson dot matrix printer off of that can print multi-part forms. Give me a decent embedded OS like VXWorks or QNX, a good mass-produced Freescale embedded motherboard, a parallel port on said motherboard, and a mass storage device (if you're paranoid, use an IBM crypto PCI card or smart card to encrypt the data), and I could have led a team of developers and engineers to pull this off in 6 months, fancy GUI included if needed.

Using what appeared to be a standard solution, Windows, led to more problems than a bespoke solution because it led to:

1. More parts to audit.
2. More code to audit.
3. More things that can break.
4. More configuration management nightmares (How are the Microsoft patches going to affect the machine?).
5. More work to do (Microsoft patches for the machines? Patching the machines after 6-9 months in storage?).

Diebold made a system that looks like it had all the bells and whistles, and met all of the "requirements", yet they built something so insecure and non-functional that it turned out to be their greatest embarrassment yet! This system is not simple, which in my mind, means that it's not secure by design. It means that it can be subverted to the means of those that do not wish to do good.

I believe that Diebold didn't approach this project with the same discipline that they would an ATM machine, nor did they care to. They made something which was clearly not designed for the task work as a voting machine. They made it appear to get past the government contracting officers by citing regulations which have nothing to do with the accuracy of the voting mechanism itself, and they built it on a horribly complex framework that has a ton of security holes, and is not designed for security.

Clearly an example of goverment largesse at work. They rushed something out to market to fill a perceived need, and may have irrevocably destroyed the rest of their company's reputation in the process.

[BigV]

:STANDING OVATION:

[tw]

Originally Posted by mbpark

I believe that Diebold didn't approach this project with the same discipline that they would an ATM machine, nor did they care to.

Posted on 22 Sept 2006:
Easy Voting Fraud Machines

... first indication that bad things might be found in their voting machines.

[glatt]

Some discouraging news from yesterday's election in DC.

Apparently a "glitch" with the Sequoia Voting Systems electronic voting machines generated several thousand write-in votes when there had really only been a handful. And the totals for the candidates had a couple thousand votes added to each of them. The glitch more than doubled the number of total votes cast in the election. The officials looked into it and found that one machine was the culprit. "It was determined that one defective cartridge caused vote totals to be duplicated into multiple races on the summary report issued by our office. The Board immediately caught and addressed this error, as is reflected in the last unofficial results report issued on Election Night."

But, they said everyone should trust the final results.

Washington Post story.

[Flint]

"cartridge" ???

[glatt]

According to the article, "Cartridges record votes from ballot machines, called optical scanners, and then are fed into a counting system that tallies votes District-wide. The cartridges must be programmed for each election, and the counting software must be able to read the cartridge information."

So it sounds like they may have used paper ballots that were scanned and counted wrong by the machines.

[Flint]

So it isn't electronic voting. It's paper voting that's being scanned in thousands of different places, creating thousands of single-points-of-failure.

Who designs something like this? They can't, at least, hire a competent IT consulting firm to evaluate their plans?

[Rexmons]

I remember reading a while back all these crazy facts about the voting systems. I can't remember all the info but some of the things I do remember:

Diebold and ES&S are the two companies that handle the voting in this country.

Neither company is regulated by the Federal government.

Two brothers run both companies.

Both are outspoken Bush supporters.

Both companies make other equipment such as ATM machines and kiosks which are capable of leaving a paper trail but their voting machines are not.


On a side note, I think the punishment for tampering with a presidential election should be death.

Here is the Link: http://nightweed.com/20AmazingVotingFacts.html

And here are the facts:

20 Amazing Facts About
Voting in the USA
by Angry Girl

of Nightweed.com



Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting...804landes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold



2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting...804landes.html



3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/htm...e_company.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting...804landes.html



4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in632436.shtml

http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886



5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentar...03/03_200.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting...4fitrakis.html



6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/module...article&sid=26

http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx

http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php



7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm

http://theindependent.com/stories/05...w_hagel27.html



8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting...804landes.html



9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041...s/pfindex.html



10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm



11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm



12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml



13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf



14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf



15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/200...oc_elexoh.html



16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie here: http://www.bbvdocs.org/videos/baxterVPR.mov.)
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190



17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in632436.shtml



18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html

http://www.yuricareport.com/Election...sBushIsOut.htm

http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html

http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.ph...rticle&sid=950

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm



19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/talla...al/7628725.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Oct29.html



20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Election...sBushIsOut.htm

http://www.computerworld.com/governm...,97614,00.html

http://www.americanfreepress.net/htm...thousands.html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html

http://uscountvotes.org/


You may freely copy and distribute this copy as long as credit is noted. Peace.

NOTE: This was originally written in 2004, the first time I voted and when I first discovered what a joke U.S. elections are. Some of the data are outdated but much of it is still true. But don't take my word for it: Do your own research and discover the truth for yourself. If you dare....

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Rexmons

...
On a side note, I think the punishment for tampering with a presidential election should be death.

Oh, but you can't kill a machine! That's the beauty of it.

[Rexmons]

Originally Posted by Flint

Oh, but you can't kill a machine! That's the beauty of it.

[Flint]

all ur votes r belong 2 us

[Undertoad]

20 Amazing Facts About
Voting in the USA
by Angry Girl

This list is like that Lincoln/Kennedy comparison

NOTE: This was originally written in 2004, the first time I voted and when I first discovered what a joke U.S. elections are. Some of the data are outdated but much of it is still true. But don't take my word for it: Do your own research and discover the truth for yourself. If you dare....

Done and done. Did about two hours yesterday, with links a cow orker was giving me on Florida 2004. What I discovered was that the claims were bullshit. And when I went over them with him, he quickly agreed. Very obviously bullshit.

Here I'll do the first five of yours.

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

Not easily verified, but the factoid is wrong anyway; it may be referring to electronic voting counting, which was used in about a quarter of precints in 2004. So maybe 80% of 25%.

Do note that the factoid doesn't really have much to do with whether fraud is occurring. That's the nature of hushed controversies; there are little factoids, but not, say, arrests and convictions. The latter require actual proof rather than a collection of trivial "fishy details". Let's go on:

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

True, but totally irrelevant; elections, per the Constitution, are run by the states. This is the sort of factoid that is most annoying; if the federal election were run by the feds, the factoid would become "Only one agency regulates voting for the entire country" and it would be supposed to be troubling and sinister. Yawn.

Do note that the factoid doesn't really have anything to do with whether fraud is occurring.

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

False since late 2004.

Do note that the factoid doesn't really have anything to do with whether fraud is occurring.

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

True and proof of nothing.

"After a public outcry, Odell announced in May [2004] that he was getting out of politics. " -- The CBS story that was linked as proof. This is the first sentence after they point out the gaffe -- did the list author not read it? (Of course she did.) "Deliver the votes" is common terminology in politics and is exactly what a state organizer would say.

Do note that the factoid doesn't really have anything to do with whether fraud is occurring.

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines

85% of the machines were ES&S. But on 0% of the electronic ones, since they were not in use at that time in Nebraska.

Do note that the factoid doesn't really have anything to do with whether fraud is occurring.