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May 10, 2004

The eVoting Story

How E-Voting Threatens Democracy is a great article in Wired News that tells much of the story of the current evoting insanity. I can think of few other current issues surrounded by as much chicanery, disinformation and duplicity as this issue. From our government never releasing promised funds to states wanting to install evoting systems as part of the HAVA act, to races that have been completely called into question by lack of verifiable voter data. This article tells the story of Bev Harris, who accidentally found the code to Diebold System's voting system and how she brought the undeniable truth to the surface. That current evoting systems are so insecure, it would take little knowledge or effort for either side to rig an election. Just the notion of election rigging seems insane and draconian. But this country has a long history of election rigging and election confusion. While the 2000 election brought voter confusion to the forefront, there have been mishaps before and after that make the 2000 snafu look benign.

For example, "In the 2002 general election in Scurry County, Texas, for example, poll workers grew suspicious when two Republican commissioners won landslide victories on ES&S optical-scan machines. When officials recounted the ballots twice by hand, the wins went to their Democratic opponents instead."

In another example, "In Comal County, Texas, three Republican candidates won their elections by exactly 18,181 votes each. Two other Republicans in a nearby state using the same kind of machines also won by exactly 18,181 votes. Five identical vote counts from machines that are "virtually tamper-proof"?"

These are just two of the multitude of examples where votes were called into question or just thrown out.

After Bev found the source, she realized it had to be reviewed by professionals, as she was not a programmer. A team from Johns Hopkins University poured over the code and released this report. I've personally scanned through the report and it is appalling how insecure a supposedly 'secure' system can be. The system encrypts votes before they are written to disk. However, the key they used to encrypt those votes is hard coded into the software (F2654hD4). The same key is used on ALL Diebold voting machines in the country. Beyond the fact that DES is not as robust as other forms of encryption, this alone is cause for alarm. Worse still, when the data is sent via the internet to Diebold for tabulation, it isn't encrypted at all. It would be easy to hijack the votes en-route.

I don't want to go into too much detail on how bad these systems are and/or how many instances of election problems there has been. These things bother me, but they are not the most troubling. The most troubling aspect has been the reaction to this information. Specifically, the reaction of the media, and the reaction of the government.

The mainstream media has failed to cover any of this in any journalistic sense at all. There have been mentions here and there, but no 'big story'. I do not claim to know why this is. All I can do is speculate on all possible reasons from benign to nefarious. For instance, voting isn't interesting. If it bleeds it leads! It may just be that they don't see a market for reporting on voter fraud. It may also be that they worry about wrecking havoc in this country by suddenly reporting that all our votes are in question. Worse, that specific elections, already held, were in question. They may worry about making voters feel disenfranchised, perhaps making them think twice about voting in the first place. Indeed, I think this latter reason may explain why local governments involved in such voting snafus have been so reticent to publicly admit problems they've had. This explanation puts a tremendous amount of faith in the good will of those in the media and/or government.

Another explanation is that the media is getting pressure not to report this too widely. Perhaps even for the reason above. It should now be known by all free thinking, skeptical intellectuals that our media can be influenced. There are two ways our media becomes influenced. The most benign way deals with how THEY get their news. If the people on their shows and the people reporting to them give them false information, they still report it. Remember the stories of Jack Kelley, Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair. All admitted fabricating dozens if not hundreds of stories for USA Today, The New Republic, and The New York times respectively.

Than there are the expert witnesses. These are the pundits you see on talk news shows which exclaim much of the information that gets repeated and turned into news. These pundits are just like their court expert witness counterparts in that they are paid to give a particular stance. It is not a coincidence that you will hear, supposedly unconnected pundits, from both sides, use the same language, ie talking points, when defending or describing something. Frequently these pundits come from large organizations that specialize in punditry. In the case of facts given by these pundits, or stories that were later admitted to being fabrication, the question is why these papers aren't checking their sources before reporting the news. In many cases, one news organization gets their news from another. If one is wrong, they will all fall in line with the same false information. We saw this again and again during the Iraq war.

Those are some reasons why the media might not be covering this, but why would elected officials defend these evoting companies, even after being shown the truth about the insecurity of these systems? In Maryland, after going through the John's Hopkins report, they decided to commission their own study to dispel concerns with the systems. The report from their own group, some of which were ex-NSA, confirmed the problems in the Hopkins report.

"We could have done anything we wanted to," said William Arbaugh, a University of Maryland assistant professor of computer science and one of the hackers. "We could change the ballots (before the election) or change the votes during the election."

Even after this definitive evidence, Maryland officials defended the systems and the companies behind them. This same scenario played out in California where uncertified patches were repeatedly applied just before elections. Only within the last couple weeks have lawmakers been pressured to ban the machines (1, 2). As an aside, the previously linked article lists many instances of these machines failing, such as this gem, "In Muscogee County, Ga., in 2003, touch-screen machines registered "yes" when voters voted "no." When notified of the irregularity, polling workers advised voters to cast the opposite of their intended vote, the NAACP reported."

So why is the government not in an uproar about this? There are a lot of people crying foul, saying there are partisan shenanigans at work. While there is a sizable amount of evidence to support this claim, such as the Diebold CEO writing "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year,” one fact in particular lessens this claim. The voting systems are so insecure, either side could take advantage of it. So why the defense? Again, we can only speculate.

Initially, honest officials, were probably dazzled by the systems and the claims of how much easier they would make elections. They produce results faster and more accurately. Those officials purchasing the systems were not technical, and likely had little reason to doubt the validity of Diebold's claims. It could be that after spending tens of millions of dollars only to learn they may have made a mistake, officials decided it was too much of a PR nightmare to admit the money was wasted. It could also be for the reason I mention above, that officials feared voters would become too cynical to vote at all, knowing how bad things really were. It is also not unthinkable that officials have a financial steak in keeping with the vendor they chose in the form of campaign contributions and kickbacks. Again, I do not claim to know the answer. The most I can do is try and believe in the most benign of reasons, sticking to my antiquated belief in the goodness of man.

Perhaps the MOST disturbing fact in this whole debacle, (I find myself using the term 'most disturbing' a lot lately), is that the American people, in leu of the media telling them it is so, by and large do not know the scope of the issue. Most American's do not realize how seriously bad this situation has become. Yet, any single google news search for 'voting' produces scores of articles in large, reputable newspapers and magazines, that if read would give any American goose-bumps. Though these articles appear in all major papers, they are still not headline news. They are buried on page 6, where most people will not find them unless they are looking.

This entry was written hastily using only google and my fingers. I did not read all the articles I cite. I have not spent a tremendous amount of time researching this issue. Yet, there is so much information out there, my only problem was what to include, and what to leave out. I do not believe everyone must be constantly investigating the news they read and our government. However, I do believe we should be skeptical about the news we read and what our officials tell us. I also believe, if you plan to vote in the next election, it is your duty to become more versed on what is going on. Otherwise, your vote may not count.

Posted by wonko at May 10, 2004 12:37 PM

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Posted by: Andrew at June 12, 2004 04:54 PM

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