5 thoughts on “It’s all hearts and bunnies in Dieboldland”

1. To be fair, the guy didn’t say there’s no one out there stealing elections, he said there’s no one out there writing malicious versions of election machine software, taking jobs as election volunteers, and then seruptitiously installing the new code on election day morning while no one is watching. That doesn’t make him right, of course, but it is a much smaller set than those who are just out to steal elections.

   It also means this problem is wholly adressable through physical security until the software fix can be delivered. Diebold should be publicly recommending police presence at the polling places to ensure that no one but the voters ever touch the machines, as oppossed to repeating the “it’s no big deal” mantra over and over…

   Of course, that kind of workable solution removes the opportunity for hysterical conspiracy theory, and what fun is that?

2. I think the history of elections is ample evidence that people will use whatever means of tampering is made available to them. If that’s rewriting elections software, then that’s it — all the better when it’s impossible to trace.

   Good luck with physical security — do you know how elections are managed in this country? Do you have any idea how many police it would take to monitor every election facility, and all of the machines, until they are taken for counting and verification — all on the same day?

3. Agreed that someone could certainly try it, but you have to admit that the universe of people capable of pulling something like that off is relatively small. The more likely scenario would be disabling a machine by erasing or corrupting its software, but that’s easier to spot.

   As for the size of the police presence – the article said that Diebold would have a fix in place shortly, but not in time for the upcoming primaries. Primaries aren’t nearly as big as presidential (or even midterm) elections, and the various municipalities all have their local police forces. I would bet this kind of solution is very doable in the short term until a more permanent solution can be reached.

   In the meantime, stop whatever you’re doing and invent an electronic voting system that makes sense. Whoever finally gets that one right is going to be a very wealthy indivdiual indeed…

4. the universe of people capable of pulling something like that off is relatively small

   Diebold has shipped systems in the past that let you touch three points on the screen, where you could go into diagnostic mode and enter the vote totals. So, no, you don’t necessarily need mad C++ skillz to tamper with a vote.

   Likewise, your disabling theory becomes quite effective if, say, you disable 10% of the machines from heavily partisan districts. Especially if they appear to operate just fine, but give bad tallies at the end of the day.

   And that’s before we get into tampering at the collection points, where you could affect hundreds of thousands of votes in one go.

   until a more permanent solution can be reached

   Very optimistic. These kinds of problems have been going on for years. There’s simply not enough pressure being exerted to fix the problems.

   stop whatever you’re doing and invent an electronic voting system that makes sense.

   Speaking of “not enough pressure”. Workable systems have existed for years. The problem is that the systems in use are from the companies who give the most money to the Republican party, or who are part-owned by Republicans. (I say this because the Republicans are in power — at municipal levels, insert local ruling class.) They largely get away with this because we canaries have not gotten enough non-canaries to care and speak out. Care to join us?

5. Speaking of “not enough pressure”. Workable systems have existed for years. The problem is that the systems in use are from the companies who give the most money to the Republican party, or who are part-owned by Republicans. (I say this because the Republicans are in power — at municipal levels, insert local ruling class.) They largely get away with this because we canaries have not gotten enough non-canaries to care and speak out. Care to join us?

   Sorry, that’s just not true. I worked for one of the companies that bid on the original electronic voting contracts back in the late 90’s (full disclosure: I didn’t work on that proposal, but the company’s involvement was well publicized internally). Dozens of companies bid to do the work, including several consortiums of companies who offerred to work together (e.g., software providers teaming with hardware providers, etc.). At the time, none of the proposals was considered secure enough to implement on a nationwide scale. It was only after the “hanging chad” elections of 2000 that the political winds changed, and systems were perviously deemed insufficient were put in place anyway to quell public opinion about the antiquated voting technology used in some locales.

   The fact that individual executives in these companies (or the companies themselves) donate money to one party or another strikes me, quite frankly, as either hysterical nonsense, calculated misdirection, or sour grapes.

   First of all, most large companies give significant monies to both parties. Second, whatever the political leanings of a given CEO, the potential profit involved in building a trusted system tat is re-used every four years on a national level is so much more valuable than getting one guy elected, it’s not even funny.

   Until someone shows me some causation to go along with the correlation, I’ve got to assume it’s all just smoke. Of course, if such information exists, I’m confident you’ll be the one to point it out to me…