Will the Next Election Be Hacked? 904
plasmacutter writes to let us know about the new article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone, following up on his "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" (slashdotted here). Kennedy recounts the sorry history of electronic voting so far in this country — and some of the incidents will be new even to this clued-in crowd. (Had you heard about the CERT advisory on an undocumented backdoor account in a Diebold vote-tabulating database — crediting Black Box Voting?) Kennedy's reporting is bolstered by the accounts of a Diebold insider who has gone on record with his concerns. From the article: 'Chris Hood remembers the day in August 2002 that he began to question what was really going on in Georgia... "It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state," Hood told me. "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from [president of Diebold election unit Bob] Urosevich...' According to Hood, Diebold employees altered software in some 5,000 machines in DeKalb and Fulton counties, the state's largest Democratic strongholds. The tally in Georgia that November surprised even the most seasoned political observers. (Hint: Republicans won.)
As soon as you have people willing to cheat.. (Score:5, Interesting)
News for Nerds No Longer (Score:1, Interesting)
With the Bin laden story Taco posted today from left field, I realize that Election Day must be coming soon, and the "politics" news will overshadow any other postings on the front page.
Once upon a time, Taco himself said this kind of stuff doesn't belong on slashdot.
Maybe.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Or bring the United Nations in on it.
It seems like the main difference between a certain 1st world country and many 3rd world ones is the scale of election fraud, not the type or quality.
International monitors anyone?
The last two presidential elections (Score:2, Interesting)
In 2004, we have Diebold getting plum government contracts around the country to make "voting machine". Look it up and see what the President of Diebold, a die-hard Republican, said about using his machine to deliver the election to George Bush. Then do a little investigation of Ohio and its secretary of state's successful attempts to disenfranchise the voters there (read up on his suddenly-required abnormally thick paper be used for submission of absentee votes).
If anyone thinks a future election is in danger of being hacked, they haven't looked very close at the last two presidential elections.
Diebold ATMs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Edison was wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:two words. (Score:1, Interesting)
In fact, it was pretty damn lucky for the republicans to get an issue to motivate a large group of voters to show up that soon before an election.
UN disallowed from monitoring (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you imagine the government's reaction if Venezuela refused election monitoring?
Minnesota (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Simple -- Whatever interest of the Establishmen (Score:2, Interesting)
I've done my own reading too, and it seems highly likely that the last 2 elections were stolen. That means the US is in the middle of an ongoing coup and it's going to take a lot more than typing on teh interweb to sort it out. How long will it take for this realization to become mainstream? Can it become mainstream without the MSM to help? Is this going to be the time the internet comes to our rescue by enlightening more or more people or will society simply become more polarised until some sort of civil war starts?
Don't confuse DRM with Security. (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe we should just GET RID OF ELECTRONIC VOTING until somebody can make uncrackable DRM software.
DRM has no place in an election. DRM is about restricting the rights of a computer owner. WiMP, for example, has DRM but the OS that uses it is still unfit for network use. DRM is not what the local election commission needs to keep elections honest.
What they need is free and secure software. If the software is free, it can be inspected by anyone with any doubt. If it's secure, inspections won't harm the vote. The problem is that Dibold and M$ own the software used in voting machines and anyone using them has to take the machine's honesty as a mater of faith rather than knowledge. That kind of centralized power is easy to abuse. When election commissions use free software, they own the equipment and can verify it's honesty. This increases the number of people overseeing the process, which makes it exponentially more difficult to rig. The public should accept nothing less.
Only a free election will be an honest election.
Times change... (Score:2, Interesting)
Still, several Georgia counties were experimenting with ScanTron ballots prior to the statewide Diebold deal. This system has several advantages; notbaly, there is a paper trail. On the whole, I'd feel a little better if that is the system they had gone with for statewide electronic voting.
You bring the pitchforks, I'll bring the torches (Score:2, Interesting)
It may well be that it will take an uprising of unprecedented proportions if we can ever again expect to have a free United States of America.
This breaks my heart, because as the son and grandson of immigrants, of veterans, of union members who spent their lives working in support of a nation of free people. I was taught that as an American we have a blessed status as people who actually control their government, not the other way around.
But with the "Republican Revolution" of 1994 and the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004, we have entered a period where those that are in power have decided that their constituents live and work only at their pleasure, and that real power flows from their government down to us, instead of the other way around, which was the belief of the Founding Fathers.
We have lived through a decade when the people who are entrusted with our government have brazenly grabbed power and wealth and DON'T EVEN CARE THAT WE KNOW IT.
I'm afraid it's going to take people, citizens, lots of them in the streets. Angry and willing to break the social contract to take back their rightful position as the source of the government's power. "Of the people, by the people and for the people" was the way the great men of the Enlightenment expressed it. "For the rich and on the people's necks" is the way the emergent Right-Wing in America have twisted it. And the worst of it is the decent working people of middle America have had their vision twisted by a Public Relations machine so powerful that they will willingly vote against their own interests. I have a home in Rolla, Missouri, and I've seen it with my own eyes. Mothers whose children have given their lives in Iraq shedding tears and proud in the belief that their children avenged 9/11 by invading Iraq - because Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh told them it was so.
It breaks my heart but it might just take people, a lot of people, in the streets and willing to disobey the law to express their unwillingness to allow their nation to descend into an authoritarian nightmare. It might take general strikes, civil unrest and maybe a few bombs being thrown for us to once again see the light of freedom burning in this Land.
It's happened before.
Re:UN disallowed from monitoring (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Give me a printout! (Score:5, Interesting)
good (Score:5, Interesting)
Why hack the election? (Score:5, Interesting)
* Give poor voting precincts ancient machines and very few of them so that people have to wait hours and hours in line to vote. Isn't that what we saw in 2004?
* Dream up a system of "provisional ballots" to placate voters when a voter is "challenged" -- and then never count those provisional ballots.
These tactics are the way the past 2 elections were stolen, and they're profusely documented. Even the huge exit poll discrepancies of the 2004 elections were ignored by the US corporate mass media.
And don't forget the way BBC reporter Greg Palast [gregpalast.com] clearly documented that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris eliminated more than 90,000 Florida voters in 2000 as "suspected felons" -- with over 90% of those voters being Democrats. But you're read about that scandal in the US corporate mass media, right?! (Not!)
Sorry, the elections are already being "hacked" and it doesn't take an electronic voting machine to do it.
3 million votes for Mickey Mouse! (Score:1, Interesting)
Take one big district, say, Los Angeles, and hack the voting machines to have a massive write in land slide victory for Mickey Mouse. It would be crucial that the results are rigged to put Mickey in the lead by at least 80%, and to make sure that the total number of votes exceed the number of people in the voting district by at least 200%. Basically, make the results so ridiculously wrong that no one in their right mind could possibly consider the election valid. It would also be important to do this in a district that has NO paper trail so there cannot be a recount. Then just sit back, watch the news, and laugh.
Re:News for Nerds No Longer (Score:1, Interesting)
Not quite. (Score:3, Interesting)
NO, what they are admitting is they don't believe in open discourse. Just because someone mods you down for your opinion, doesn't mean your opinion is the truth.
considering there is no unbiased proof (yes, speculation and people pushing an overly biased agenda don't count) that the 2006 election was stolen
Since when have "conservatives" been concerned about having unbiased proof and been against people pushing an overly biased agenda? Need you be reminded about the WMDs in Iraq, believed with no unbiased proof because people with an overly biased agenda simply claimed it?
No system is perfect and there is always room for improvement, but there is a line between constructive comments and conspiracy theories.
Do you consider the whole "Axis of Evil" claim constructive comments? Do you consider claims that liberals are trying to destroy the country constructive comments or conspiracy theories? Do you consider the implication that those who disagree with the ones pushing an overly biased agenda in washington are unpatriotic and/or traitors? Because even if you answer reasonably to any of these questions, so-called "conservatives have been very unreasonable with regards to these issues for the last several years.
If it's this easy.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Three words. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:As soon as you have people willing to cheat.. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you do it the decentralized way you have to corrupt *a lot* of committees to sway the vote substantially. If you centralize the vote counting (moving ballot boxes, electronic voting, etc) you reduce the number of people you have to coopt dramatically. Clearly, anyone intending to corrupt a vote will prefer centralized alternatives. Anyone trying to demonstrate a fair and just election must prefer the decentralized, hard-to-corrupt model.
One URL. (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.wm.edu/news/?id=4027 [wm.edu]
Oh, wait, sorry about believing what you want to believe, I forgot.
I actually hope a Republican DOESN'T win in 2008 so we can have a 4 year reprieve from the incessant bitching about people who thing Bush/Republicans stole the election(s). (I didn't vote for Bush.)
Re:As soon as you have people willing to cheat.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only are they clearly just running Windows all the sound effects are default Windows NT 4 sound effects. Not only that, but the sound they chose for clicking a button successfully is the error prompt.
Anyone know of a good bank that doesn't have its head up its ass buying diebold equipment?
Version Control not DRM, GPL Violation or Hard . (Score:3, Interesting)
you can make Free software just as good by requiring specific builds with authorizations keys and what not to install on voting machines, but I am under the impression that would violate the GPL v3. Thanks Richard Stallman!
GPL V3 does not keep people from checking the version of their packages. It's only a GPL violation if you keep the user from modifying or changing their own software.
Yes, anyone can analyze the official source code, but not one can see the source code that was compiled and installed on any given machine by a [random] technician.
That's what package checks, like those used by Debian, are good for. A state or county can set up a package repository and be sure that any qualified technician can get and install it without trouble. Indeed, the process is fool proof enough that the local election commission can do it themselves. This is much better than having a single company do everything, especially a company with a shady record like Dibold.
Read what Warren Slocum has to say. (Score:3, Interesting)
Warren Slocum [warrenslocum.com], who is in charge of elections here in San Mateo county, is extremely critical of touch-screen voting machines. He liked the system we had here - big paper ballots marked with black markers, which the voter inserts into the scanner atop the ballot box. This gives a quick count when the polls close, and the ballots are locked in the box in case a recount is needed.
But we couldn't keep that system. It wasn't compliant with the "Help America Vote Act", which requires touch-screen machines for "accessability" by blind people. San Mateo had to go touch-screen, but it went with Hart InterCivic eSlate machines. They're still not high-security devices, but they're way better than the Diebold crap. Slocum pushed to get California to require printers for manual recounts on all California touch-screen machines, and that's now the law in California.
But Hart InterCivic has problems, too.
"Gail Fisher, manager of the county's Elections Division (for Travis, TX), theorizes that after selecting their straight party vote, some voters are going to the next page on the electronic ballot and pressing "enter," perhaps thinking they are pressing "cast ballot" or "next page." Since the Bush/ Cheney ticket is the first thing on the page, it is highlighted when the page comes up - and thus, pressing "enter" at that moment causes the Kerry/ Edwards vote to be changed to Bush/ Cheney."
Re:You bring the pitchforks, I'll bring the torche (Score:2, Interesting)
None of the abuses of power under the current Republican adminstration were given to them by anyone, nor were they in place when Bush took office. Bush and his cronies have SEIZED this power, either by BREAKING THE LAW or by CHANGING IT.
Short of putting a silver bullet or a wooden stake in to Bush and Cheney themselves, there is nothing anyone could have done under the LAW that was not ALREADY IN PLACE to stop them.
For Christ's sake, this is one of the most frustrating arguments that people make. What, exactly, were the Democracts supposed to do before 1994 to ensure that no president ever waltzed into office like Bush and decided to WRITE HIS OWN LAWS AND DISREGARD CONGRESS ENTIRELY? Do you think they should have passed a bill that said:
"House bill X.Y.Z(A.B.C.)
This bill hereby forbids the President from writing his own laws and disregarding Congress entirely. If Congress says it, sorry old boy, you gotta do it, and if Congress forbids it, sorry old boy, you can't do it. The President is not entitled to end the rule of law just becuz he wants to. Period."
One would have hoped it was self-evident. And even if they had passed such a law, what would stop Bush from taking office, sitting down with his pen, and doing exactly what he did anyway?
"My Response to House bill X.Y.Z.(A.B.C.) by George W. Bush
I'm gonna do what I want anyway, neener neener neener, because I'm the decider! Just try to stop me!"
What were the Democrats supposed to do pre-1994 to prevent such a power grab?
And don't let's forget that torture was illegal, prisoners were guaranteed trials, spying required a warrant, and international law prevented pre-emptive wars before this administration. This is not stuff that the Democrats "gave" to the president. This is stuff he "took."
They're lawmakers. All they can do is fucking MAKE THE LAW. If Bush and Cheney decide that law is not cool, they're gonna rule the skool, how is that the fault of everyone before them that FOLLOWED the law? How the HELL are these things the fault of the pre-1994 Democrats, for Christ's sake?
What happens next? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is (hopefully!) where the US system actually STARTS to work. (Given that it is currently *not* working) The USA has a very good system of checks and balances - currently these are NOT being used and are not working correctly, but it is inevitable (I say) that they will start to work soon-ish.
While it IS true that US non-voters are the most apathetic bunch of losers possible, it will happen that they actually DO become concerned, but only when things get bad for them personally. Within a few (3-5) years from now, the average US worker will start to realise that they are working 10 hours a week more than they used to, but that their standard of living is not improving. This will be entirely due to crazy monetary policy, political mismanagement, Military stupidity, and excessive foreign borrowing.
THIS is when the corruption will be rooted out of the US system, and I predict many thousands of people will go to jail. Not hundreds, but MANY thousands. It might take years for those responsible to be foundout and imprisoned. (And, if the US court system isn't fixed in the meantime, most of the indicted will die of old age before they get a court date.)
Until things actually get worse for average voters (or actually, average non-voters, because they outnumber average voters IIRC) there will be no "political will" to root out the offenders. Sure, the losers of elections will protest loudly, but unless they are supported by a strong electorate, and strong evidence (combined! One by itself just isn't good enough) then the situation will continue as now: The worst democracy money can buy.
The absolute mystery to me, is how the normally sane people of America, have permitted a voting system which does not have a paper component to be implemented. I believe it is all to do with the "housing bubble" which has put so much money into US pcokets that you've all been far too busy buying Hummers, Plasma TVs, Satelite dishes and going out for dinner, to actually see what's been happening to your country.
Pretty soon though, the housing bubble is gonna burst, and that Hummer will cost $300 to fill the tank, and the Plasma TV will suffer burn-in and the Satelite dish will have 27 arab-speaking channels, and 99 Chinese speaking channels, (All you'll be left with in English) is FOX and 195 channels of Sports) and the restaurants will be closed, or feeding you heart-attack food.
THEN and ONLY THEN - will the shit start to hit the fan.
Re:Simple -- Whatever interest of the Establishmen (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm going to go with the path of least resistence here and say, "Because there's nothing to report."
This is quoted from None dare call it stolen [harpers.org]:
There's a lot more interesting reading (at the least) at that link.
Assumptions? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with this claim is that the one in three billion number is calculated by assuming that the exit poll was taken by a completely random sampling of voters. Of course, exit polls are not collected at every polling station, and we expect to see different results at different stations. Even if they were taken at every polling station, certain voters might be more willing to take an exit poll than others. Random sampling is well understood, and it is possible to remove uncertainties about the "randomness" of a sample, but exit polls are not conducted this way because of the time and difficulty involved (it would not be possible to collect enough data in one day). To account for this, pollsters normalize their exit poll results to the real election results and use the data to say which groups of people voted for with candidates.
So no, that is nowhere near conclusive.
Re: Will the Next Election Be Hacked? (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it more in younger people; if you were in public school in the late 60's or 70's, you can easily believe in corrupt government being something you should care about; if you were in Public school in the 80's or 90's, then you have difficulty looking away from anything bright & shiny.
We are toast. I have no idea of what could be done to make people DO something. I just bug my congress critters to keep the 2nd Amendment (our government reset button) alive, and hope i'm not doing my kids a disservice by educating them on the things they don't teach you in school.
Fraud-proof voting systems exist (Score:0, Interesting)
These systems employ random processes, using seeds like the final closing price of the stock market, to select a set of random ballots from the pre-talley group for "decryption" by linking them to the final talley group. It can be statistically shown that just auditing a small number of the votes this way can make an undetected ballot forgery extremely likely to be detected. More than a few fraud votes become virtually impossible to go undetected.
The systems work, even if every off-the-shelf computer used as a voting machine (they can be put to use in schools and such during the interrims between elections) is running malicious code, instead of the proper open source code it's supposed to be running.
Why are we not using these types of systems?!
I AM PULLING MY HAIR OUT RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I DON'T FUCKING KNOWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!
http://punchscan.org/ [punchscan.org]
Re:As soon as you have people willing to cheat.. (Score:5, Interesting)
You got modded funny for a reason.
"I'm astounded that people think the NAZIs would 1) fix an election and risk bringing down the whole party, 2) find police officers willing to arrest Communists on clearly trumped-up evidence, 3) find courts willing to convict said Communists 4) be able to do it all under the glare of national media 4)(again) be able to keep the entire conspiracy totally silent."
I'm NOT intending to say that Diebold are about to start rounding up all the Jews--although to be honest I think most people of all political stripes are closer to that kind of behaviour than we'd like to admit--but rather that the unwillingness of ordinary people to believe that the Powers That Be would "ever do such a thing" has always been a major weakness in democratic systems. Good democacies and democratic republics have always recognized that their continued existence depends on a balance of antagonisitic powers, and that the system needs to be designed to make fraud and malfeasence as difficult as possible.
Anyone familiar with human history will be aware that people do exactly the kind of things you talk about all the time. Companies lie about drug side-effects, for example (Vioxx), despite the obvious risks. People are stupid, managers doubly so, and never think they are going to get caught.
As others in this thread have pointed out, computers are very good at making massive, precise, pre-programmed changes while maintaining certain types of constraint. Anyone who has ever writtten a one-line Perl script to massively change a document will appreciate what I'm talking about, and anyone who says, "Elections can be stolen under paper ballots too" has clearly never written a line of code in their life. Electronic voting makes easy what was once hard--why set fire to the Riechstag when you can change a few lines of code?
As such, decentralized paper ballot counting is by far the best way to go. In Canada we have scrutineers from each party at polling stations, and paper ballots with electronic readers of one form or another. I leave the polling place knowing that my vote has already been counted by the reader, and that there will be spot-check counts on paper ballots to ensure the reading machine has not been tampered with. It's really not that hard to do.
Re:Why that's so... (Score:4, Interesting)
There was a direct correlation between accuracy of the exit poll in a given precinct with the balloting technique used. Where a paper trail exists, the exit polls were statistically more accurate than in precincts where electronic voting was used (no paper trail.)
In my opinion, that's a clear indicator of something being wrong with the vote counting in those precincts, not the exit polls. I have the raw data of exit poll numbers from several states, voting method in precincts, and the final results. There's a clear correlation. However, those data files aren't handy here - google it yourself, or follow the links from this Wikipedia article (I know -- not the most reliable source, but it's a starting point): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._presidentia l_election_controversy,_exit_polls. [wikipedia.org]