Diabolical Diebold - Digital Dissent

DIABOLICAL DIEBOLD: MANY SUPER TUESDAY VOTERS WILL BE FACED WITH POTENTIALLY INSECURE VOTING MACHINES

(Friday 27 March 2004 by JAMES IAN ZAMORA)

This Tuesday when Californians go to the polls they may be certain about who they are going to vote for, but how certain can they be about the computer voting machines that they use? 2004 is the deadline for the removal of all punch card systems from Californian polls. Only DFM Associets' Datavote punch card system has retained its Californian certification and will be in use in 12 counties. The other 46 Counties are either using optical scan (OS) systems or touch screen/direct recording electronic (touchscreen/DRE) systems.

Fourteen Counties across California will be using touchscreen/DRE systems on March 2nd , six of which (Alameda, Kern, Plumas, San Diego, San Joaquin and Solana Counties) will employ either the Diebold AccuVote-TS or AccuVote-TSx systems. Diebold quickly became the most controviersial of all the computer voting manufacturers after there was a leak of their bulletin board messages that were written between 1999 and 2003 in which Diebold employees discussed problems with the hardware and software. Diebold sent cease and desist orders to the sites that were hosting the damaging memo archives and also obtained subpoenas under the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) in order to force Internet Service Providers to turn over the names of the users that were hosting the archives. While the lawsuits piled up the archives remained available online through a technological shell game of setting up new mirror sites of the earlier servers after they were shut down. Recently The Online Policy Group along with two Swathmore students represented by the Electronic Frontiers Foundation and the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society Cyberlaw have sued Diebold stating misuse of the copyright law.

Diebold has also come under fire after the Secretary of State's Voting System Panel learned that Diebold had installed uncertified software on the voting machines in Alameda County in the days leading up to the Recall Election last October. This violation of California State law prompted the Secretary of State to audit all Diebold machines in use in 17 Californian counties and found that they had all contained unathorized software which had not met with State or Federal certification.

The operation of the touchscreen/DRE machines require that when you go to the poll you are provided with a smart card which you then take to the machine. The smart card contains your identification and allows you to vote just once. In July of 2003 a paper released by Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University illustrates how anyone with just basic computer skills and around one hundred dollars can print out their own smart cards and vote as often as they like.

Along with the replacement of punch card ballots with computer voting machines came all the pitfalls of American Intellectual Property law. The privitization of the voting system which until recently always been a part of the public commons removes much of the transparency that we had previously enjoyed. The compnanies that produce the machines maintain that the software and hardware that they make is proprietary informantion and must remain secret. The idea of keeping the inner workings of the systems doesn't sit well with many computer scientists and technologists alike who maintain that the software and hardware details should be made public and open to scrutiny.

Last February Califronian Secretary of State Steven Shelley formed the Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force in order to address issues of security and to determine the necessity of a paper trail in computer voting machines. Many computer scientists and the public felt that a paper trail would be necessary in the case of an audit of votes cast. In the Secretary of State's response to public comment he stated that while he did not belive that the systems were insecure he did feel that a paper trail would be necessary for voter confidence. State law now requires that a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) be in use on every new machine purchased as of July 1, 2005 and that all current systems be retrofited or replaced by July 1, 2006.

The Voting Systems and Procedures Panel will meet to discuss “Election Systems & Software – Ranked Choice Voting for San Francisco” on March 30, 2004 at 1:00pm at 1500 11th St. 1st floor auditorium Sacramento, California. The public can submit written comments and if you wish to provide information or present an oral statement at the meeting, please contact Michael Wagaman at (916) 657-2166 or mwagaman@ss.ca.gov.

Position Paper and Directives of Secretary of State Kevin Shelley
Regarding the Deployment of DRE Voting Systems in California

http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/ks_dre_papers/ks_ts_response_policy_paper.pdf

To view the Internet Voting Task Force Report:

http://www.ss.ca.gov/executive/ivote/

Full text of the John Hopkin's Information Security Institute report on Diebold insecurities

http://www.avirubin.com/vote.pdf