It's easier to rig an electronic
voting machine than a Las Vegas slot machine, says University of
Pennsylvania visiting professor Steve Freeman. That's because Vegas
slots are better monitored and regulated than America's voting
machines, Freeman writes in a book out in July that argues, among other
things, that President Bush may owe his 2004 win to an unfair vote
count. We'll wait to read his book before making a judgment about that.
But Freeman has assembled comparisons that suggest Americans protect
their vices more than they guard their rights, according to data he
presented at an October meeting of the American Statistical Association
in Philadelphia.
Pointing to a little-noticed "Cyber Security Alert"
issued by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team
(US-CERT), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the
source inside Diebold -- who "for the time being" is requesting
anonymity due to a continuing sensitive relationship with the company
-- is charging that Diebold's technicians, including at least one of
its lead programmers, knew about the security flaw and that the company
instructed them to keep quiet about it.
"Diebold threatened violators with immediate dismissal," the insider, who we'll call DIEB-THROAT, explained recently to The BRAD BLOG
via email. "In 2005, after one newly hired member of Diebold's
technical staff pointed out the security flaw, he was criticized and
isolated."
In phone interviews, DIEB-THROAT confirmed that the
matters were well known within the company, but that a "culture of
fear" had been developed to assure that employees, including
technicians, vendors and programmers kept those issues to themselves.
The "Cyber Security Alert" from US-CERT was issued in late August of 2004 and is still available online via the US-CERT website. The alert warns that "A vulnerability exists due to an undocumented backdoor account, which could [sic: allow] a local or remote authenticated malicious user [sic: to] modify votes."
The
alert, assessed to be of "MEDIUM" risk on the US-CERT security
bulletin, goes on to add that there is "No workaround or patch
available at time of publishing."
Right after the November 2003 elections I saw some stories on voting
results compared to exit polls. Exit polls were everywhere reliable,
except for three(?) big states where the actual outcome of the
elections differed approximately 5% from the exit polls and this was
every time favorable for Bush. In all of the three states voting
machines without paper trail from Diebold were used.
There hasn't been any follow up on this story. Now, I don't know if it wasn't a hoax, but it makes one suspicious. Might the back door have been used already?
You've heard the reports of the new Diebold touch-screen voting
machines which have recently been updated to include a so-called
"voter-verified paper trail."
You may also have heard how the
printers they've added to produce these "paper trails" on their
previously-paperless touch-screen voting machines are reported to jam
up in test after test -- like the one last summer in California [PDF] where some 33% of such machines failed due to screen freezes, software failures and paper jams.
These "afterthought" printer modules, and the "paper trails" they
produce -- which are largely uncountable and uncounted by election
officials not to mention unreadable by mere human mortals -- have
failed in all sorts of test situations.
Most states require no
actual counting or meaningful audit or even cursory review of these
toilet-paper "paper trails" (distinct from a countable paper ballot.) Some states (hello, Florida!) even disallow the hand-counting of such "paper trails" by law! So how well the printing modules actually work, is almost
beside the point. 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.
To be clear: These devices provide no assurance that ones votes will actually be counted accurately -- or even at all. You
may have heard that Diebold actually includes a magnifying glass with
each machine to help voters see these tiny, virtually unreadable "paper
trails."
There's an opaque brown door that can be swung down over the
"Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail" rendering it completely invisible!
As
March wrote, "If the county elections people want to cheat, just swing
this door down and most voters won't know to swing it up!!!"
Could
that little brown door be the reason why all of those "voter-verified
paper trail" rolls on the busiest Diebold Accu-Vote machines in Toledo,
OH in November 2005 turned up completely blank at the end of the day?
Is that why nobody even noticed that voters weren't voter-verifying their "paper trails" throughout the entire Election Day there? Just a guess.
RememberYOU don't count because Diebold doesn't count!
Pointing to 
