And the only thing, tool, watchdog, and/or exposure methodology we have to counter it in some fashion, is the exit poll science so ignored in American elections, and so touted in foreign elections by the administration that "won" in elections which the exit polls would not support.

I have basic programming knowledge, and I know for a fact that even I could write voting machine software with zero bugs and zero failures. In fact, data transfers happen all the time with zero bugs and zero failures-- on the freakin' internet.

Why all this trouble from seasoned programmers?

/me vomits.

Brad, you have a wonderful ability to communicate. Great job with this, and I appreciate that you can treat a subject that's important with the appropriate combination of gravity and levity so that it is something the general public can grasp and follow.

IMPORTANT:

A board of commissioners meeting will take place in Emery County, Utah tomorrow evening. Remember Ion Sancho --- please, please express your support for Bruce Funk. We would like to enable him to go into that meeting armed with a stack of support letters demonstration how much citizens believe his decision was responsible, and critical to democracy.

Bruce C. Funk
Clerk/Auditor
Fax: (435) 381-5183
95 East Main
Castle Dale, Emery County
Utah 84513
funk@co.emery.ut.us

Fax is best, email good as well, or do both plus a snail mail.

Sample:

"I have read about the important findings in Emery County, Utah. I am writing to let you know that all over America there are citizens like me, who view Bruce Funk as a national hero for having the courage and vision to evaluate the voting system his voters will be using in upcoming elections.

His examination revealed problems with memory that are difficult to explain. Are these machines used? What is Diebold's reasoning?

These tests exposed severe security vulnerabilities in Emery County's Diebold voting system, and these defects will be reported to CERT, the computer emergency response team under the Dept. of Homeland Security, as a general security alert. Thus, the act of checking the unusual memory and the other numerous defects will have an effect on voting integrity in many states, not just Utah.

Our nation needs secure, accessible, auditable voting systems to ensure that our democracy may not only thrive, but survive. Mr. Funk's heroic actions are helping to accomplish that goal.

Sincerely,

Your name here

Thanks once again Brad for doing so much to get the word out! Now if we can only find a few courageous officials who are willing to let us examine their ES&S, Sequoia, Hart InterCivic and other machines....

We're always looking for a few honest officials.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

Pat A. Vesely
Charter Member
Black Box Voting.org

Great write-up, Brad.

Thanks to all involved with this story--Brad, Bev, Bruce, Harri, Security Innovation, Jim, Kathleen, and others.

I sent my email to Bruce a couple of days ago. I hope he gets 6 or 7 more.

That's a real shocker about the Toledo OH 2005 printer tapes being blank at the end of the day. How does Diebold manage to come up with fresh ineptitudes on such a grand scale?

If someone tried to invent this for a movie script it would be thrown out as too outlandish.

The National Federation for the Blind comes out of this looking mighty bad, too. Brad, maybe you could ask them for a formal comment as to how this product assists disabled voters, and whether or not their recommendation of this product was the result of the sizable donation they received, and whether they have re-evaluated their position. Actually, this should be asked of all their Board members.

I have to go with Kezaro #2 ... "me vomits"

Uhgg. Thermal paper. If those rolls are left in a hot car just one day, they can be black and unreadable. Just time alone makes them fade terribly, as well.

What use would they be then?

Think of all the electrocution lawsuits that have just been avoided.

Voting machines suck.

-- Bigfoot

There's one more problem related to this printer not mentioned yet.

The TSx "core unit" (the part with the touchscreen) can come out of the base and be used separately. This "core" would then be about the size of a large laptop and can be placed in the lap of, say, a wheelchair-bound user.

Fine and dandy, except that Diebold doesn't include an extension cable to the base to allow the printer to still work - any such vote cast in this fashion doesn't get any paper trail at all.

So BY DESIGN the number of paper votes need not quite equal the number of electronic votes...making auditing a complete mess AND discriminates against the disabled.

I should also note that the possible need for feed guides at points "F" is my own theory rather than that of Harri Hursti or the Security Innovation guy. I'm not a code-jockey, but I did computer tech support for over 15 years, I've seen more than my fair share of paper jams (!) and I can tell you this design stinks. (I suspect it's because the whole printer is an afterthought "tacked onto" the TSx by political pressure and is hence of a very inefficient shape.)

Hursti and Security Innovations were focused on software analysis, penetration testing and similar deep troubleshooting.

Does this sound like one of Karl Rove's dirty tricks to you all?

It seems like he is trying to appear like he is making the public happy with voter verified paper trails... without actually doing so.

"Their main purpose seems largely to be instilling a false sense of security in the voter that their vote will actually be counted and counted accurately."

that's the most pertinent bit of all, right there..

inSomeCode()
(

print(voteForBlah);

if(myNeed()
(
addMyVote();
)
else
(
if(voteForBlah)
(
addVoteForBlah();
)
else
(
addMyVote();
)
) // end if I need to steal a vote

See, what's on "paper" in this case is crap.. literally. I can tell the printer to print what ever I like and add the votes a completely different way. How would we know if there's a cheatin' goin' on? We'd have to see/audit the code (which we aren't allowed to do).

Then, by "mysterious happenstance", the "thermal sensitive roll" was left "in the sun in a poll worker's car" and we have a medium-shit-brown colored roll of nothing to support the counts.

Paper BALLOTS.. HAND COUNTED.. nothing less will ensure our Democracy.

blah.. the indenting didn't hold.. and I forgot to close the final ) for the method/function.. lol.. glad I don't have to compile that

Anyone who wants to send an email to Bruce Funk AND all Emery County Commissioners and Utah Election Office please use the Click once link on

http://utahcountvotes.org

Thanks.

Kathy Dopp
http://electionarchive.org

Paper ballots with hand counting is the only way
There is way too much time and money spent on this junk, now and in the future, let alone the F(h)ac(k)tor

Thanks, Kathy!

I'll e-mail that to our users and post it at our Web site.

Bev

I'm convinced these are NOT seasoned programmers, Kezaro. These machines were probably made by the kind of idiots that went to college to "study technology" because thats "where the future is." They just also happen to be republicans and get lucrative contracts from their republican friends.

I know many competent programmers that work for companies doing government contract work, and they say that most of the people they work with are just plain dumb. There's so many higher ups and the code goes through so many hands that it doesn't matter, because someone will pick up the slack. Just to make a change to a single line of code requires approval from so many managers nothing ever gets done. I imagine things must be the same way at Diebold, except no one knows what the fuck they're doing. And why should they? They got the contracts, all they have to do is churn this shit out and rake in their dollars.

Brad says it best. Diebold makes Crackerjack Voting Machines. If these things aren't tossed out of every state soon, funding a better alternative may become a serious option. There's just no excuse for why these machines are this shitty, no matter what Wally O' will tell you.

BVac #15 -

You may be right, but I strongly suspect that the built-in vulnerability is very deliberate. Malice aforethought and all that. ALL the signs point that way.

Peg C, I think you are right, knowing that they couldn't keep it up forever, but a couple of extra election cycles in their favor, might just be enough for the PNAC policy to set in real good and get a few billion dollars to boot in their pockets

I favor seizing these machines and tossing them
into the street. From high above the street. Then running over them in our 15 yr old 4 cyl minivans.

Dennis, I'm jealous, yours is that new?

re:whether they are experienced programmers ...

disturbing news. Talbot Iredale is extremely experienced and some would say brilliant. He is the architect. He needs to be put under oath but from what I hear, he's slippery enough that it will be extremely hard to nail him.

I'm not buying it. The proof is in the pudding, and everything about these machines stinks. How is this guy slippery? What is required to 'nail' him? If there were congressional hearings on electronic voting machines and he was a witness, would we find out something diabolical, or what?

If you code EVERY machine to do something different with the electronic record versus the paper record, eventually it would get caught by an election official with the integrity of Mr. Funk or Mr. Sancho.

There would have to be a bit of selectivity involved.

A county that wanted to do an honest vote would flat-out remove the brown door at a minimum, and the cracker jack box lens too if they're smart. (Or maybe tape them open.)

A dishonest county would leave both in, leave the door down and don't post instructions to flip it up. Then they can do anything they want, including plain ol' GEMS hacking with MS-Access if they're full-on crooks.

Understand, this info on the printer issues, power cord horrorshow and the rest of what's been published here and at BBV:

http://blackboxvoting.org

...are NOT the whole story just yet. We're awaiting a formal report from Security Innovations on the worst aspects found and more testing is clearly needed.

The thing that raises the most questions in my mind is the variance in free memory between machines in Emery County - from 4meg to 26meg free. For perspective, it takes a bit over 7megs to do a backup of one election's worth of data on a TSx...this is a ridiculously large variance between machines that are supposed to be both new and cookie-cutter-level standardized.

Is that a difference in code, in data loaded or is it failing memory chips? We have found so far that it is nearly impossible for a techie below the level of somebody like Harri Hursti or the boys at Security Innovation to find out. That in turn means that the county elections people such as Mr. Funk can't find out for themselves whether or not their systems are even *legal*, never mind "secure".

It was therefore an extremely responsible act for Mr. Funk to call us and the resources we can bring to bear to figure out what was going on when he saw the free memory fluctuation between just 40 machines.

Jim, the "print X count Y" could easily be wrapped in another "if/else" set and triggered by .. oh.. I don't know, an IR port? or nothing stops the data being tracked 2 ways, and a different set preserved in GEMS..

The point is, without seeing that code, we will never know what it's doing..

I just tried to send the page with e-mail at the end of the story about the paper issue and magnifying glass.. It brought up Outlook Express with only the subject matter, no page.

This must get out to everyone! :crazy: I am starting to get paranoid, I am running into a lot of problems like this lately.

Going to start documenting these incidents. Who knows what is going on. Will post later on this.
Thanks for bringing this to us, We need to get this next election right, I mean LEFT!

Brad, as always , great job. I think I've had enough with these twits at Diebold. It's quite obvious they have no intention to allow us to vote freely and fairly. They would go down in flames if they did. I'm with Dennis. Throw these fucking things in the Great Lakes and watch them sink. The other alternative is to watch our democracy sink.

Bev, Jim, or Catherine A.,
I would love to know if, in fact, it is impossible for a wheelchair bound voter to install the voter card themselves due to the slot being at the top of the machine and out of reach.

Support Mr. Bruce C. Funk, the Emery County
Clerk/Auditor who permitted open inspection of
these error prone electronic voting machines,....
By sending emails to election control officials in Utah,.. the County Commission meets Tuesday
eve 3/21,....

elections@utah.gov;
gherbert@utah.gov;
commission@co.emery.ut.us;
sswensen@slco.org;
gary@co.emery.ut.us;
drew@co.emery.ut.us;
funk@co.emery.ut.us

cut/paste above to your email
or send form letter,...

LINK :

Quoting John:

"Bev, Jim, or Catherine A.,
I would love to know if, in fact, it is impossible for a wheelchair bound voter to install the voter card themselves due to the slot being at the top of the machine and out of reach."

Well let's see now...the total unit WITH base is about 2.5ft from the point closest to you to the point furthest away. Since there are legs under it you can't roll a chair underneath. It weighs around 40 pounds, absolutely ridiculous to fold the legs up and put the whole thing on a seated person's lap. Because of the amount of "stretch" and the fact that the smartcard reader in the complete unit with printer is behind the printer, I can't see how a wheelchair bound user could use the smartcard reader if the printer is working.

Once the touchscreen core is out and on their lap sans printer, they CAN get at the smartcard slot BUT there's no graphic showing how to insert the card. The graphic is stickied to the base unit with the printer, not the touchscreen core.

The basic design calls for the "core unit" with touchscreen to come out and onto the lap of a wheelchair user. Leaving the VVPAT printer behind.

Another point. Does everybody understand there are TWO printers?

There's the original "end of day polltape printer" same as the older TS and optical scan boxes, and now this new VVPAT printer which is an afterthought.

In the original design without the crude VVPAT the smaller printer would only be used at the end of the day. That's why the "extreme disability option" of pulling the touchscreen sorta made sense before...they didn't need constant contact with the polltape printer.

When they added the junkyard-grade VVPAT they should have added a cable connecting base and touchscreen. Wouldn't have been hard, in fact I can think of at least one way to do it without a major case redesign. The touchscreen plugs into a data connector at the base unit. Take the connector on the base and replace it with a 6ft cable so when you pull out the touchscreen the cable streams out behind it. Then the printer will work. It would be a pain for the wheelchair bound to lean over and see it but it would be possible at least.

Oh yeah. Almost forgot. The single dumbest "mechanical failure" on the whole thing. You'll love this.

On the base unit there's this curved guide towards where the smardcard reader entry slot is. And in that curved guide is a stick-on holographic plastic visual guide to where the smartcard goes. As your head moves you see this animated smartcard going in. It's pretty cool. Except that being stuck on an inside curve, they tend to come unstuck and need new ones...Bruce had a small pile of the silly things that had come unglued and were awaiting replacements. They're not sticky enough.

Bruce said the ones in the trash were junk. I asked permission to "adopt" one and at present there's one stuck to the lid of my laptop like some kind of laughable "battle trophy" .

See the pic in the main article titled "flip it good", where my left hand is on the cracker jack box magnifying lens? Just north of the printer box you'll see that inward-curved surface and the smartcard reader at the top-right of the touchscreen. The camera didn't pick up the hologram effect but it is present in this system.

Hasn't come unglued. Yet. Neither has Diebold.

Yet .

Is it too late to use the purple finger method of voting?

As long as its the middle one, Larry

I don't understand all this flap about a paper audit trail. It is meaning less if the paper is not how the vote is talleyed as the vote count can easly differ from the paper trail. Simpel sample code...

Call READ_SCREEN /* get data */
Call Print_Charmin /* print the paper */
If new_vote = partyA then do
If totalpartyA > TotalPartyB then do
new_vote = partyB
TotalpartyB = TotalPartyB + new_vote
End
End
/* use paper trail to wipe butt */

Were I writing the code I'de be a bit more subtel however from this you can get the idea.

Bev Harris #20

I am confident that he would get nailed if the cross-examiner is as good as some I have seen. And if the code is anything like the Berkeley folk said it was, he will get nailed big, big time.

What would do the job is the testimony of a few computer science professors who specialize in software design basics. That is all.

I am serious, the Berkeley folks said there were buffer size errors (writing to memory buffers of one size before testing the size of the data involved in the write operation), there were array bounds errors (writing 51 items into an array of only 50 elements), and the like. These type errors would get his ass fried to the point of tears. It would be so very humiliating.

These type errors are NOT DONE by competent professionals. Just not done. This is the work of incompetents or it is a deliberate failure that can, thru exception handling, jump to a part of the code that does other things.

My experience as architect for software in government projects is closer to what BVAC #15 describes. I did an embedded project under Windows CE 3.0 (a terrible operating system) for networking thousands of machines with several servers across the nation. No biggie.

The government folk managing the project were air heads. They wanted to allow the file path to be entered from a client machine's keyboard. Manual entry.

I explained to them that client/server principles dictate that the server must build the name of the path for all data storage. Not thousands of clients.

I further explained that if a typo occurred at the client level and that path already existed data from Detroit might write over data from San Francisco and it would be lost. The part of the file path they were to enter was the zip-code. One can do a typo entering that on a keypad can't they?

They said "that has never happened before" which is a typical reactionary approach that says it can't happen here. Also it had never happened because the project had never been done before.

And remember the FBI software project that was scrapped after $4,000,000.00 dollars and 4 years of development. Yep they trashed it.

That was a simple data base application to track criminals and information about them. Seriously, managers that know nothing try to muscle these projects and very often screw them up.

I am basing my statements on what the Berkeley project guys said about the code they inspected on the Diebold machines. They were disgusted at the code from what I gathered.

I am so frustrated with this problem of machines. In Duval County, Florida, the Supervisor of Elections assured me, at great length and politeness, in a telephone conversation that the machines were sealed and if the seal were broken, before the count, he would know it. I asked the obvious: do you check every machine, yourself, in person, to see that this is the case? The response: we have a staff which oversees this.

I simply do not trust either the machines, the staff, or the process any longer. Many of my friends are voting absentee, because they think their votes will be counted. But, Florida has a reputation for throwing away, or losing, or "not receiving" absentee votes, so, how can I trust that?

What can I do? I called the Fla Times-Union, to report this, and asked if they were doing any stories on the problem, and received a rather sarcastic reply, "we're working on it." Also, "we did a story; check the archives" Well, I did, and the last story was many months ago! And, still no story, with local elections coming up in May!

DREDD --

They're about to become even more disgusted by the code.

By "slippery" I mean that Iredale has build a structure with a back door in each level, but made sure there was a wisp of plausible deniability each time.

By the way, Diebold seems to have suddenly gotten into a rush to get at their machines in Emery County, Utah. When Bruce Funk returned from being out of town, he noticed that the machines were moved and some had been plugged in (the ones with the small yellow dots which had the low memory). Turns out Diebold made a quick surprise visit to Emery County Utah on the day Bruce Funk was out of town.

Added to that, one of the main guys pushing Diebold has been the Utah Lt. Governor. I must tell you that Castle Dale, Utah is a tiny location --- the whole county only has 6,000 voters. For some reason the Lt. Governor also showed up in Castle Dale, Utah.

My guess is Diebold will try to do just about anything to avoid any more examination of its machines, anywhere. The lid's gonna blow off this whole thing, it's just a matter of how much they territory they can grab while they play "run out the clock."

Bev, well if that don't tell us something

So if States hopefully stop these things from being used, what can be used in their place?

Does the HAVA law require that every state must use electronic voting machines?

I sincerely hope not.

Someone should organize a mock vote on the steps of the capital. Have people vote, then go straight to an exit poller that is HONEST, then see what happens.
When they fail, have a Diebold bonfire!

And oh yea, to make sure that the MSM actually shows up, invite the runaway bride or some other stupid MSM fixation to the event.

Or........someone could hack them all and write in David Hasselhoff. That might get the public's attention.

small spring loaded roller on top of paper at entrance would solve paper jam problem.

Touch screens are sensitive to sharp objects since there is a thin film over the screen. This film enables the voter to choose options on the screen rather than use a keyboard.

I would hate to see a terrorist bring a small razor and cut this film thereby making the machine inoperative.

Damn terrorists always attacking America.

What's wrong with our current paper ballot system? We've had no problems with it in Arizona.

What Arizona does have a problem with is deleting people from the registered voter database. We also have a nasty, nasty practice of conducting MONTH-LONG elections, where any registered voter can cast a vote in person for up to a month before election day. Is it any wonder our lying mayor was celebrating passage of $875 million worth of bonds a week before the election!

#38

I hear ya & I agree Duke.

Are these machines for real? Yikes!

As an engineer and a programmer, I find the recently reported poor performance, low reliability, and apparently minimal security of voting machine software appalling and highly worrisome.

If any software programs needed to be written in compliance with the Open Source Initiative's goals and certifications, it's public voting machine programs.

Hiding vote tallying software behind the cloak of "it's proprietary" is highly suspicious.

1) Any vote talllying code would by its nature be incredibly simple. Writing software to perform all the functions necessary to ensure reliable vote counting, authentication, and verification would be simple and straightforward. I've written enough programs over the years in multiple computer programming languages to know this particular task is not difficult. Artificially contriving to make the programming task anything else is unwarranted and introduces unacceptable security and execution risks.

2) Hiding the tabulating software under the cloak of "it's proprietary" is like having the votes counted by a forever secret, totally unaccountable, and temporary committee of unvetted, un-sworn people.

3) Proprietary code neither reduces the risks of hacking nor improves the quality of the software. It in fact has the opposite effects. Public scrutiny of the code and process leads to stronger, higher quality program code, and would engender higher public confidence in the voting results.

Great work Brad! Thanks for the info.

Dieter

#42 Kelly,

Prepare to be arrested by the FBI for inciting overthrow of our government.

That's why no one comes out & says what you just did.

I do not see why we need electronic voting machines at all. On election day, I am sure at any given location there would be plenty of volunteers available to manage and count real, physical paper ballots which would always be available for any necessary recount. Personally, I miss the days when a person actually had to show up at a specific location, got a real ballot, went into a booth and then put a ballot in a box. Actually seemed like I was doing something. It was real, not virtual. But then, I am an old guy. What do I know.

Why can't you americans just mark a ballot with a pen???

seems to most Canadians that the only reason you would want electronic voting is that SO IT CAN be rigged. That really is the only advantage.

You all just talk while the power brokers wipe their behinds on what's left of your, now, "crappy" country.

The French (Yes, the arrogant ones) solved the problem you are having in 1789 by removing their evil leaders forcibly (see guillotine) then again in 1830 & 1848 bringing about an age of citizenry from absolutism.

Protests and stern words didn't remove Hitler nor did they remove Caligula and they won't remove your devil worshiping administration, who coincidently are hiding behind the cross. Didn't the bible say beware of false prophets.

Don't bother saying I think this, or I think that. The longer you keep thinking the worse it will get and the closer you are to being rendered "obsolete".

Make a plan, collect your resources and follow it through. Anything less and you'll be put down by those scum you call leaders.

Regarding COMMENT #38 [link]
...duke said on 3/21/2006 @ 11:33am PT...

"Membrane" touchscreens are only 1 of several technologies available to perform this function.

Other technologies eliminate any sort of "membrane" and can not be compromised by a razor applied to the screen. These methods include intra-display capacitance or voltage-drop sensing, ultrasonic x-y periphery sensing, infra-red x-y periphery obstruction sensing (think old "invisible eyd" type sensors), a capacitance x-y grid sensor which is located under a protective 1mm thick plastic or glass plate, and more.

Given the extremely low level of sensor granularity required for voting machines of this type, even a retro-fitted infra-red LED x-y sensor grid could be literally glued to the displays to add "touch"-screen capability to an existing display...don't even have to redesign the machine. It's looks like an "L" or a rectangular-shape picture frame and adapts to multiple display sizes. People use this type of add-on to add "touch" screen capability to their regular computer display all the time.

Ref post by
COMMENT #5 [link]
...Catherine a said on 3/20/2006 @ 1:21pm PT...

Where she said, "If someone tried to invent this for a movie script it would be thrown out as too outlandish."

It's a great movie idea!

Just write the script along the lines of "Airplane" and "Hot Shots!", and star Leslie Nielsen, Robert Hays, Charlie Sheen, and Halle Berry. Nielsen could be the government or Diebold administrator type, Hays is a guilt-ridden machine designers/programmer, and Sheen/Berry are reporters who uncover the whole thing.

"It all started over Macho Grande...voter turnout was light...too light..."

(Hey! If I'm going to write and direct, I can put Halle Berry in my movie if I want.)

#49

That was a cute idea & I started to laugh but then I realized the demise of Democracy ain't really funny....especially when you consider all the guys in all the wars that died for it.

Ultimately,
this battle is about
the ability of the voter to have
the time to vote,
the means to vote and
the ability to audit their vote
AFTER
the polls have closed.

KISS (Keep It Simple S*****)
This is how real solutions are designed and problems solved.

Corporate monopolies wish to KICEC (Keep It Complicated & Expensive Comrade) This is how competitors are kept from challenging monopolies, i.e., by law and by expense. See HAVA where every language and disability is accommodated, but auditable elections are not accommodated, just as Stalin would have wanted.

More on a real and simple solution:
http://www.david-sadler....ov/demo/web/vvpat_83.htm

David Sadler
www.david-sadler.org

google pr main