There's a difference between HACKING and RIGGING.

[garybeck]

When Diebold claims their machines can't be hacked, and people talk about "hacking the vote" I think it is important to consider, there's a difference between hacking and rigging.

Let's just assume for a minute that Diebold's claim is true. Let's say the DRE (or opscan) machine they make is completely hackproof. Let's say they give one to Avi Ruben and he can't hack into it. Wonderful.

But that says NOTHING about the RIGG-ABILITY of the machine. That doesn't mean that someone from within DIEBOLD couldn't program the machine to rig the election. There could be any kind of program on there to do anything to the vote counting process. As long as they have proprietary software, and there are no manual audits on the system, they are COMPLETELY RIGGABLE.

So when you hear the Diebold rep saying how unhackable the machine is, he may be lying about that too, but what he's really doing is diverting attention from the fact that there's nothing preventing his company from RIGGING the election. He's putting the theoretical blame of election fraud on to a third party. Some computer geek who's so passionate about politics that he tries to figure out how to hack in and change the results. In reality, it is probably pretty difficult to do this...

But the attention should be on Diebold itself, not the activist geek. Since they have complete control over everytyhing and no one can check up on them, it would be EASY AS PIE for them to rig it and it would only take a handful of people to be "in the know" and they would never get caught.

Hacking and rigging, two completely different things. Don't let them move the spotlight away from themselves and on to a hypothetical computer geek activist.

[napi21]

1. Wouldn't the testing that each State is supposed to do find

most rigging?

I don't know if you can trust the states to do the test right, but IF they did, I would think you'd have to rig enough votes that a test would show it.

For instance: If every 10th vote for a Dem was changed to a Pub vote, or even a random switch based on elapsed time.

To gain enough votes to guarantee a victory, wouldn't the switch have to be performed often enough to show up during a test?

[garybeck]

2. no, absoultely not.

the sad truth is that most states do not have any such tests that you describe. they are at the mercy of the manufacturers who use proprietary software. when something goes wrong, a Diebold rep has to come and fix it.

here's an example, in my home state of Vermont, the only testing that is done on the opscan machines whatsover, is that the town clerk runs a few test ballots trough the machine before the election starts. if it tallies the votes properly, all is well. it is only a few ballots per machine. basically every candidate has to have their oval filled out at least once on the test ballots. this is what the secretary of state's office told me and and I don't even know for a fact that that it's done on every machine.

in the vote RIGGING scenario, the programmers at Diebold can do anything. they can program the scanners to count the first 500 ballots properly, and then all of the sudden make the republican total higher than the democrat. they could make every democrat vote count backwards and republican count forwards. anything you can think of, they could program.

in most states there are NO AUDITS on the actual vote counting of election night so they would never get caught.

i'm sorry to say, but that is the sad truth. that is why people are serious when they say we don't really live in a democracy. it is so easy for elections to be rigged, it's outrageous. the fact that the machines are not hackable is completely irrelevant.

[shraby]

3. It could kick in after so many thousands of votes,

so a test wouldn't show it because they probably don't use that many votes to test it.

[garybeck]

4. exactly the problem here in VT (see my answer above) n/t

[napi21]

5. So what's your solution?

I really believe touch screen technology is the way to go. We can't go back to paper ballots, and I think everyone knows that. Damn, I remember the days when you had to drive down to the local city office to check the voting results that were posted on the door!

I'm a big fan of technology. I was an accountant for 40+ years, and I sure wouldn't want to go bact to the days before the computer!!!!

I spent the last 15 years working and using a PC, and I NEVER found the computer to make a mistake! It was always operator error!

Wo how can we make these voting machines as accurate as the ones we all use every day???

[garybeck]

6. the solution is simple

here is the forumula to prevent hacking AND rigging of elections, period. Here is what you need:

1) Voter verified paper audit trails (VVPAT). Whether it's a touchscreen machine or an opscan, there has to be a piece of paper that the voter looked at and verified that it is correct. We already have it with the opscan systems. With the DRE (touchscreen) machines the companies are starting to offer it but we still have far to go with the DRE machines. Either way, there needs to be a paper trail.

2) Mandatory Manual Random Audits (MMRA). A certain percentage of the precincts need to be audited manually. That means people hand count VVPATs from the precinct. If the total is off from the machine count, then a larger area must be hand counted.

3) Precinct level public reporting of election results. citizens need to be able to obtain the totals for each precinct, so they can add them up and compare them to the state totals.

That's it. With those three things in the system, it is almost impossible to hack or rig an election.

There are those who insist that open source code is a requirement also. I am also a supporter of open source code, but I submit that if you have those three things the open source code is not as important as audits. Diebold and the like could write all the rigging software they want, and not allow anyone to see the code; if there are audits they will get caught.

[emlev]

7. Check out this little movie about random audits

"if there are audits they will get caught."

Would it were true.

http://homepage.mac.com/sheltonlankford/.Public/RandomSample.mov

[yowzayowzayowza]

9. Put another way...

No bank could stay afloat auditing only 10% of their ATMs. EVERY device MUST be audited in EVERY election. Simple. IMHO, even with appropriate auditing, election automation should be limited to the simplest of opti-scan counting devices and computer assisted ballot completion for the disabled. Any more is a waste of resources and an invitation for fraud.

[garybeck]

12. I understand the point but the exercise is not a correct depiction.

there is a big problem with that movie. the scenario is one single county or state with 100 precincts. Any statistician, or decent math student will tell you, that of course if you run the test one time, or two or three times, there is a certain percentage of a chance that you will pick the brown peg. I believe this is the math:

Let's say there are 5 brown pegs and 95 white ones.

If you do a 1% audit (pick one peg) you have a 1 X 5% chance of picking a brown peg.

if you do a 5% audit, you have a greater chance of finding a brown peg, but it is still a relatively small chance, it would be somewhere around 25% (not exactly because when you pull the 2nd peg there are only 99 pegs to choose from, not 100.

The point of the exercise is to say, do you want a 25% chance of catching a stolen election?

That argument is flawed, because in reality there are thousands of towns and counties. the same experiment is essentially repeated over and over again thousands of times.

In that scenario, a brown peg would almost certainly be picked eventually.

in other words. let's say you have 25-sided die, and you color one side of it a different color. If you throw the die one time, you probably won't get the colored side up. But if you throw the die a thousand times, you will almost definitely see the colored side come up, and quite certainly more than once.

The example in the film would only be appropriate if the election had one singe town or county with 100 precincts. It is a gross misrepresentation of how the random audits would work.

The movie also makes a presumption at the end, that if you do find a brown peg, it doesn't accomplish anything because there are still 4 other brown pegs in there and no one knows. This is also not correct because most proposals I've seen call for a larger manual audit if a discrepancy is found. In other words, if a brown peg is found, then half, or even all the precincts in that county or town have to be audited. So the chances of finding the other ones are pretty good.

Having said all that, notice that in my formula for secure elections I did not specify the percentage required for the random audits. That is because I am not a statistician. I think the answer is somewhere in the middle and I would trust a team of statisiticians to come up with a reasonable amount to audit.

What you're looking for is a percentage that makes it almost certain to find the brown pegs, even if there was only a small number of them. In other words, go back to the example in the movie. the flaw again is the test is only done once. in reality on election night the exact same test is done thousands of times because there are probably tens of thousands of precincts across the country. I think most people would agree, if they did the exact same experiment in the movie 1,000 times, they would pick some brown pegs, even with 5% audits it would be almost certain. Actually even with just 2% audits, if they did it 1,000 times, chances are pretty good they would pick brown pegs, and probably several times it would happen. Of course the more you audit, the greater the chance of finding the brown pegs. The statisictians need to come up with a figure that makes it very likely to find the brown pegs.

What does it take? Can be done with audits of 2%, 5%, 10%... I don't know. But I don't think a statistician would agree that the movie is a good representation of how audits would or wouldn't catch fraud in an election. The problem again, is they only did it one time. If that were a fair representation - our elections just involved one county with 100 precincts for example, then I agree 100%, that just auditing 2 or 5% of the precincts would not be acceptable. In fact if that were the case I would be an advocate of 100% hand counts.

but that's not the case. in reality the experiment would be repeated over and over again and they would pick some brown pegs. and when they pick them they would have to then count a larger sample, or even the whole county, and they would find the other pegs too.

NOW.. the other comment is well taken. that auditing on the precinct level is somewhat of a problem. it would be better to audit each machine. I agree with that. but that adds another level of complication because whatever level you audit, you also have to make available the totals. in other words, if you audit at the machine level, you need to make available the totals for every machine so that observers (the public) can add them up, and verify each precinct total is actually the sum of all the machines in the precinct. This may or may not be worth the extra effort. It all comes down to the math. The chances of catching fraud under every scenario can be calculated and compared, as well they should.

I do not think it is possible to audit every machine, based on a certain percentage of the votes in each machine. I've heard people suggest a few ways to do this, but none have made complete sense to me. At the end of the day you have a stack of VVPATS and you know the total for the machine. I don't see how you can take a percentage of the VVPATS out of the stack and check something in the machine against it. If the machine only tells you the totals that it counted, the only thing you can do is count all the VVPATs for that machine and verify that is the total that the machine counted. If you are going to do that with every machine, you are then counting all the ballots by hand.

It really all comes down to math. We need to put some faith in mathmeticians. If they say there would be a 98% chance of catching fraud, would you be happy with that?

[yowzayowzayowza]

14. If you want to make DREs with VVPAT auditable, ...

the controller needs to maintain periodic (10 minutes?) totals & subtotals. The precinct could then audit sufficient random periods to comprise a specified percentage of the total ballots cast. Allowing the vast majority of systems to go unaudited is ridiculous, especially when a single rigged system could swing an election.

[shraby]

8. Another thing they could do is make it

so when you record your vote you can see the tally advance by one.

[kster]

10. Kick-n-recommended,nt

[Bill Bored]

11. That's about right.

Put another way, there are features in every GEMS server that are illegal in 33 states and that's just for starters.

Who's to stop them from being used? The GEMS Police?
And this is probably not limited to Diebold's junk.

[garybeck]

13. definitely not just diebold...

I just use Diebold as a generic term sometimes to refer to all the manufacturers because most people are familiar with them. and becuase they are criticized probably the most, we also have a lot of soundbites of them saying how their system is not hackable.

in reality the problem applies to all the manufacturers.

[NoBushSpokenHere]

15. I just completed a statistical analysis

which resulted in Kerry ending with 51.68% of the vote, Bush ending with 44% of the vote, but ran the post through spell check and lost it all :(

This analysis was based on Ohio having 11,366 precincts as reported on Blackwells site. The assumption is that since the Board of Elections in most of the Ohio counties violated Ohio recount law by preselecting the precincts closest to the 3% instead of by random, the flipping could have occurred in the other 96% of the precincts. If this flipping were at the pace of 10 votes per precinct, Ohio has over 11,366 precincts. My computation was based on 96% of those precincts having 10 votes flipped per precinct which would have been enough for Kerry to have won. If 96% of those precincts were manipulated by 10%, the results would have been as stated at the top of this post. When I have time, I will run this analysis again or someone who is more mathmatically inclined than I can feel free to do so.

[klook]

18. Preselected audit targets = not random

Thanks for the info. I hope you'll get the energy to redo your statistical analysis. Unfortunately, I am not too mathematically inclined, so if I tried to do it it would undoubtedly be wrong.

[many a good man]

20. Precisely the topic of a thread posted last December

Playing Russian Roulette with Ohio's 3% recount rule

I still have spreadsheets of Ohio by county and details on precincts in one county (Washington). Triad alone could have flipped the whole state undetected. With foreknowledge of likely recount scenarios and lax auditing they could have easily done so with minimal risk of detection.

[adolfo]

16. The machines must remain hackable

IF Diebold rigged their machines either directly or indirectly then they must maintain plausible deniability. The only way to do that is to NOT provide a secure and solid product.

For Chris sakes these are simple functions like adding and storing basic information. Stuff most computers have no problem doing! Even my calculator does a better job of counting.


IMO: Their inability to fix security holes provides a larger picture of their true intentions.

[Gregorian]

17. Chance of hacking 0%. Change of rigging 100%.

Thank you for saying what I've been trying to say.

The key is that the chances of hacking are essentially zero. But the chances of rigging are nearly 100%.

I don't know how to better put it.

[glitch]

19. Yep. Well said. They are so cute with words. K(andR)ick! nt

[MissWaverly]

21. Can I just ask a simple question

When I went in to vote on the Sequoia AVC Advantage 315, when I pressed the plastic square next to Kerry, the light next to GWB
lit up 5 times, now the GAO has said that they switched the order
of the candidates in some places where you thought you were voting
for Kerry but you were actually voting in the position allocated in
the computer for GWB.

Now when I voted Kerry was on the left and George W. Bush was on the
right, so as an incumbent shouldn't GWB have been on the left (the
top of the ballot???)

I voted in a heavily democratic area.

[FogerRox]

24. The Advantage is an old machine- using pushbuttons to record selections

these older type DREs are noted for losing lots of votes.

[MissWaverly]

25. thank you

there were only 944 votes in my ward for the entire day, although
I waited for 2 hours to vote

[yourout]

22. Simply touching the screen or pressing keys in a specific order...

could activate a hidden chunk of code to do what ever the programmer wanted it to. Without the source code there is no way to know what the machine is suppose to do. This is were the "calibration" problems
that always seemed to favor Bush come in.

[autorank]

23. Rigging is much easier. As always, excellent gary. Recommended

And for your viewing pleasure, here is one of the very best vote riggers, Boss Tweed. He'd send roving bands of vogters from precinct to precinct to vote for his candidates. They seemed to do quite well, and in turn, were very loyal to the Boss. Wonderful huh. Today's roving bands come in many forms but always remember,

IN COUNTING THERE IS STRENGTH, Boss Tweed.



The Truth Shall Set You Free

[FogerRox]

26. >wink< I thought rigging was the ropes and stuff on a sailing ship

[Land Shark]

27. and then there's "tampering" which may differ from "rigging"

such as the lone election official who inserts some disappearing executable code instructions or just overwrites results

[Amaryllis]

28. It can also be hacked. Kevin Shelley said a bunch of high school kids

hacked into a Diebold machine, and Bev Harris taught a chimp to do it. They can be hacked or rigged!