E-voting Forensics

[cquark]

The EFF presents a balanced view of e-voting issues with the November election. While it seems unlikely that the results of the Presidential election will be changed, some votes have simply been lost and it's clear that current electronic voting systems do not have the necessary reliability or security for us to trust them with our elections. Much needs to be fixed before the next major election, including more reliable and secure software, a paper trail, and a better system for auditing and verifying these systems.
Here's the EFF article:

The media are buzzing about whether the electronic voting
systems used in this election really worked as "smoothly"
as they appeared to work. Is it possible that some machines
malfunctioned in ways that skewed results? Could problems
like the 4,530 votes lost in North Carolina due to a data
storage error be only the tip of the e-voting iceberg?

The good news first: From what we can tell, it is unlikely
that the problems with touchscreen machines changed the
outcome of the presidential race. But that doesn't make
it impossible, and EFF is still looking into some
problems in Ohio and elsewhere that could be very
important.

The bad news: Let's suppose for a moment that the picture
of the presidential race stays unchanged. Does this mean,
as some vendors are claiming, that the machines "passed
the test"? In a word, no. If the election had been
closer in such key states as Florida, Pennsylvania, New
Mexico, or even Ohio, the problems we saw could easily
have thrown this election into chaos, and that chaos
could have affected either candidate.

It will take some time to analyze the information collected
in the Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS), but
regardless of what we find, the current figures show
that machine malfunctions were the third most common
voting problem reported. And recent reports demonstrate
that not all problems were obvious. EFF is therefore
moving to examine the machines that exhibit the most
troubling malfunctions, with the goal of determining
whether what we've seen indicates even more serious
or widespread problems.

Which brings us to the ugly news: There's one story about
this election that we'll never know - what happened
inside the machines that do not have a paper trail.
It's somewhat reassuring that, in most instances
at least, final exit polls and other external systems
give us roughly the same picture that the election results
do. But suppose that wasn't the case? This is what audit
trails are for. The figures in cooked books often look
perfectly fine; so would a cooked vote tally. In this
election, we are forced to take it on faith that our votes
were recorded in the way that we intended. But as the
late former President Ronald Reagan noted long ago,
when important issues are at stake, we need to both
"trust" and "verify." That's why the battle continues
to persuade election officials nationwide to adopt
systems that are 1.) verified by the voter, and 2.) can
be audited after the fact.

To learn more about the e-voting problems that have been
reported so far and EFF's concerns, check out the links
below, including the audio recording of the joint EFF
and Verified Voting Foundation (VVF) press tele-conference
held on Election Day.

For the original version of this piece online:
<http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002073.php>

 

[glugglug]

The REAL final exit polls DON'T give the same results.

The exit polls were modified to be closer to the official results after the polls closed (bringing them near margin of error). This is why the Penn State study and the Caltech study get different results -- the Penn State uses the original "final" exit polls released by AP newswire, the Caltech study uses the "updated final" exit polls. Which brings to mind the obvious question: Why did AP Newswire feel the need to ALTER the exit poll results. In some cases the "updated" version actually has "votes" missing, not just new ones.

 

[Kibbo]

Ummm Paper Ballots, anyone?

 

[Format C:]

I suggest that all voters submit a thumbprint at registration and when voting they must apply their thumbprint to the appropriate "box" on a touchscreen optical scanner, and once again to approve a final summarization screen. Then that scanner would print out a pre-marked paper ballot which could be checked by the voter before inserting into a seperate optical scanner which would provide a backup tally of votes. If the printed copy had errors the voter would have the opportunity to re-insert the paper ballot into the original scanner, which the machine would keep, verify their intention to re-vote, once again by thumbprint, and re-do until all is correct. The original machine, in addition to keeping a voting tally that would be checked against the other machine's, would keep a record of all thumbprints which would be electronically checked against a nationwide certified voter database to ensure the vote cast was not only legal but that nobody was voting in more than one precinct. Think that would do it? Somehow I doubt it.

 

[Darkhawk28]

There are quite a few ideas out there that would work just fine, it's getting it through the Republican Congress that's the hard part.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
There are quite a few ideas out there that would work just fine, it's getting it through the Republican Congress that's the hard part.

Any also getting the funding.

Many people feelk that any type of identification of them kept in a database is dangerous.

What would stop the fingerprints from being switched?

What happens if the finger is damaged?

Could law enforcement use those fingerprints for identification of perps?

Liberals would never agreee to such a possibility.

 

[chess9]

Florida counties purchased the NO PAPER TRAIL LEFT BEHIND VOTING MACHINES because they were a cheap solution. As Eagle Keeper notes, the states and counties are under increasing revenue pressures and are trying to save money. In this case they were penny wise and pound foolish because many of them will be under enormous pressure now to purchase paper trail machines. Here in Florida the dollar cost will probably be in the hundreds of millions.

-Robert

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: Format C:
I suggest that all voters submit a thumbprint at registration and when voting they must apply their thumbprint to the appropriate "box" on a touchscreen optical scanner, and once again to approve a final summarization screen. Then that scanner would print out a pre-marked paper ballot which could be checked by the voter before inserting into a seperate optical scanner which would provide a backup tally of votes. If the printed copy had errors the voter would have the opportunity to re-insert the paper ballot into the original scanner, which the machine would keep, verify their intention to re-vote, once again by thumbprint, and re-do until all is correct. The original machine, in addition to keeping a voting tally that would be checked against the other machine's, would keep a record of all thumbprints which would be electronically checked against a nationwide certified voter database to ensure the vote cast was not only legal but that nobody was voting in more than one precinct. Think that would do it? Somehow I doubt it.

Identification of voters isn't the problem with current electronic voting systems.

The problems is the ease of altering the totals, either at the voting machines or at the central tabulators; why bother impersonating one voter, when you can replace the original number of votes with whatever number you wish?

 

[cquark]

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
Many people feelk that any type of identification of them kept in a database is dangerous.

What would stop the fingerprints from being switched?

What happens if the finger is damaged?

Could law enforcement use those fingerprints for identification of perps?

Liberals would never agreee to such a possibility.

As I mentioned before, identification is not the problem with current e-voting systems.

However, such databases are dangerous, and for some of the possibilities you suggest. Fingerprints aren't changeable and are assumed to go with the person that database claims they are. It's cheap and easy to construct a gel finger with any fingerprint you've captured on it, so if the fingerprints are presented in the ballot booth, they're as easy to forge as false driver's licenses.

Fingerprints are also damaged by occupation, certain habits (pipe smoking), and age. It's difficult to get good fingerprints from the elderly, which largely isn't a problem when using them from law enforcement since few criminals are elderly, but which is a problem when using them for a general identification scheme.