With the elections coming up shortly it still upsets me that we have a disturbing system of voting. That the dems try to get mandatory printed receipts and to date they republicans just will not allow it to come to the floor.

Some history, I have read a source that there were discussions in the inner circles of companies involved in design and manufacturing of voting machines regarding printing receipts started in the 60 or 70s. So this is not a new subject as the manufacturers would have us believe. As we know Diebold if not the largest manufacturer of electronic systems also owns the lions share of ATMs that have printed receipts since the beginning. Also we know that Diebold makes ATMs that have error rates so low I do not know of anyone that has ever had a error. If these ATM machines which are far more complicated in its ability to talk to any bank in the world securely had the slightest error rate or vulnerability to hacking like our voting machines, the banking system would collapse in one day.

As an Engineer who has been VP of Engineering as well as director of R&D; I can tell you designing a voting system is an easy project vs a normal one I work on. I can tell you I can buy printers for as low as $15.00. And when designed in, the delta cost in virtually nothing other than the hardware I just mentioned.

I can also tell you with the present testing of these machines if I was going to steal elections there is no way you could ever stop me. I could put in a special chip no-one knows what it is that triggers via a RF signal and no one could stop it, I could put in back doors that no one could find even by looking at the source code.

Now to demonstrate that I am correct regarding security of hardware note the following reference.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...na_computers_1

Chinese-Based PCs Won't Do Classified Work

By FOSTER KLUG, Associated Press Writer
Thu May 18, 8:53 PM ET



I can tell you our federal government got it... do you?

The question for debate I have asked before is:

Question for the debate : Is it appropriate for the manufacturer of voting machines to be contracted out to partisan sources or is there a way to ensure neutrality in the manufacturing of voting machines?


Edited for revised debate question - Jaime

In light of the government not allowing classified information on computers I have the following point I like to make.

First as an Engineer who could easily design a system all by myself. Again this is not rocket science, it is a simple put text up and count program. Basically college programming stuff. But I could also do the hardware.

I could put in a chip that activates only when I send a RF signal at any frequency with a code pattern to execute and override any system. Again there is virtually no way to detect this, it does not matter what the sources code has in it, it is independent. The signal could be sent via a local transmitter or from a single transmitter from Cuba or airliners above, satellite and so on.

Now a question/ point I like to make is if Jane Fonda, M. Moore, Castro, or the Chinese made the machines would you trust the outcome of any election? If not why would you think I would or should.

Is it appropriate for the manufacturer of voting machines to be contracted out to partisan sources or is there a way to ensure neutrality in the manufacturing of voting machines?

No, it's not appropriate to contract the design and manufacturing of voting machines out to companies who are not trusted to create uncrackable equipment.

I don't buy the RF technique as being unstoppable. Sure I can stop RF signals. I can detect them and jam them. This technology goes back to WW II. I can also insulate machinery to block RF signals. I think the good material for this is called lead, but hey, the old tinfoil fedora works too. I've got real cool audio cables that are thin and well-insulated from RF interference. The technology is highly developed and pretty darn cheap these days.

To ensure neutrality, a paper trail must be incorporated into the voting machines. Every voter ought to be concerned here, not only for making their votes count as they intended them, but for the issue of recounts in close elections.

I see no logical basis for resisting paper trails, assuming we all believe in the democratic process. However, I am willing to consider arguments against paper trails. Maybe I'm missing something, like it just costs too much.

Up here that argument doesn't make sense to just about everyone. Ergo, by state law, all Diebolds have to be equipped with paper trail components that the voter can read and verify before committing the vote to the lock box.

AM good luck in tracking RF signals, Can you tell me what frequency I said I was going to use? Or better yet my signal will take about 2-3 milliseconds to receive the coded signal. (data speed is much higher now) Please do not blink as that is about a second. Also if you saw my signal it would mean nothing to you. the code could be "hajhahdhfhhfhfh22" are you going to say that is changing the election by 2%

Also what I would actually do is use a very common frequency that is all over. I would send it over one of the many cell phone frequencies.

but most importantly, Next remember I am the one designing the equipment, so I get to make the rules so to speak. Ones mans ground is another mans antanee. I could piggy back the antanee in the cord. RF is virtually unstoppable when you are the manufacturer wanting to deceive.

Also I can put in back-doors into the hardware like the touchscreen that again does not show up in the software...

Another warning is here in Nevada we have printed receipts on all of our machines. I could easily get around this. The voter does not get to touch these printed receipts. Thus I could print a void once the person OKs it and print a new record, no one would know. So the printed receipts must be deposited in a lock-box by the voter themselves.

the printers used in gas pumps cost about $30.00 to $15.00 in volume, they handle outdoor conditions which would make the ones they use a bit more expensive. I am not sure of the ATM printer mechanism costs but should be similar to the ones in gas pumps.
http://www.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dk...750&Site=US
They could also just buy a standard printer for $80.00 per machine if need be.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/compa...;l=en&s=dhs

I was going to try and start a serperate thread about this article but I haven't had much free time lately.

How to steal an election by hacking the vote


I think this should be required reading for anyone that supports electronic voting in its current state. Simply put without open source, there is NO WAY to ensure neutrality in the manufacturing of voting machines. Not only is there no way to ensure neutrality, there is no way to ensure security. The more I learn about e-voting the less I trust Bush's election and re-election was legit. And I'm not being a conspiracy theorist here, from a technical standpoint it's not only feasible, it's easy.

It's a sad thought but it seems the only way America will wake up to this problem is if someone actually blatantly hacks a statewide election. A benign "Proof of concept" hack isn't out of the realm of possibility this November and my guess is we have no plan on how to deal with it if the Communist party wins Ohio by a landslide of 99%.

I was withdrawing a little walking around money this weekend, from a Chase bank machine that was manufactured by Diebolt. I got a receipt. Someone asked me why I bothered with a receipt, and I told them that I always match them up with Quicken to make sure they don't make a mistake. My friend never saves his receipts, and the bank machine is always right. When pressed, he also doesn't get receipts when he buys gas at "pay at the pump" machines.

So, obviously individual voters cannot be trusted to save voting receipts.

Printed records for each machine are suspect because of this hacking potential.

Hand-printed ballots don't work because the Washington Democratic party can hide them in the basement, "find" new ones in a recount, "hanging chads" in Florida for Republicans, etc.

Is there any possible scheme in which elections are secure?

Why do we trust Diebolt bank machines running proprietary code, but not Diebolt voting machines running proprietary code?

It is perfectly appropriate to purchase voting machines from any source as long as there are procedures in place to ensure the validity of the results they produce. If those machines were to have a paper confirmation that could be checked by the voter and then placed in an ballot box for verification then it would be possible to enable a double check system.

I personally would not want less than that - though very few voting systems have anything like that to be fair.

I will discuss this right away.

I can not and no-one has to date been able to hack into a present day ATM. And second the failure rate is so low it is at least 9 sigma. See this is why the banks still use it.

Now as we know the voting systems Diebold makes a high school kid can hack. Even a novice can be shown how to change flip a vote in 5 minutes on Diebold systems. The error rate found on the elections is so high that if this data was applied to the ATM's our entire world banking system would collapse in one day.

Next companies here in Nevada that make just gambling machines will not allow a felon to work for them for obvious reasons. Diebolds ATM group I am sure is the same. Why did Diebold allow a convicted felon to be a lead in the software group of voting machines? This is a convicted felon who put in backdoors of accounting software to steal money.

I guess you are not aware of the estimates of errors of wrong pricing in grocery stores in the USA. The numbers are quite large, and it is amazing how they are always to the favor of the store... what a co-incidence that is. Check your receipt...




Beware, just open source code does not do it, as I said I can put a chip in the machine that NO_ONE will be able to figure out, this has nothing to do with source code. The problem is some people understand software, and some hardware. To stop theft you must understand both, a systems approach. I work on projects with both so can tell you. It can be done either way. That is why in the above example the US government will not allow machines made by foreign interests to be used for classified purposes. The government can put all their own software in but within the chips there can be embedded firmware that does what it wants to do as programmed. There is firmware and software, the software is the source code that people refer to.

Unfortunately the top groups in the USA trying to work on this issue do not understand the hazards of focusing on only the source code. It can be in the chips... as I showed, and as the feds seem to grasp.

Your other points are good and I will respond to each one. But this one is really not productive to the intellectual debate from a person who has demonstrated his ability to intellectually honest. It basically says I condone our way of stealing.

Hand-printing has nothing to do with hanging chads.

But your response implies that yes you dems have a way to steal elections so us on the right can have ours. And we will lie to keep ours. Is that your rationalization.

Here are some good shocking references well backed up, the first one is very good.
http://news.com.com/5208-1028-0.html?forum...26&start=-1

there are mote facts, on the site above, with their sources..
I have edited this to late, but was getting it because I knew carlitoswhey would be asking for it, which he did before I had time to add it. but here it is, why don't we just have our prisons write the software for voting. It is getting full of republicans is why we shouldn't. read the entire source below, it is good. Brings into the question of how to make chads more probable in manufacturing. I never heard this before but as an engineer I can see how I could do it in a steel rule die very easily. this too is disturbing...
[url=http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm]
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm[/url]

http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-44.htm


Also a little bird has mentioned to me that Diebold did have a problem that shut down ATMs before.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7517

Can you please link a source for this (preferably a news story) ?


Sorry, I meant voting by hand, not hand-printing. Manual ballots are probably going to have more error than computer ballots. They have to be moved around by campaign workers, counted somewhere, all opportunities for fraud. We had more ballots than there were voters in Milwaukee in 2004. This is the whole reason that people want electronic voting, and now there are all these problems with that.


1 - I am not a member of either of the two parties, so no vote fraud is "mine" or "yours."
2 - I don't want vote fraud from anybody. I want the system to work. I just pointed out that it hurts both sides.

In this particular election, the democrats are going to have a problem with low turnout from African-Americans, specifically because they don't believe that their votes will be counted honestly. This is bad for democracy, and it's partially the Democrats fault for making wild accusations about vote fraud for 6 years.

If it was as easy to crack an ATM as it is a voting machine, I would be on a beach sipping margaritas right now. when was the last time 12,000 people had a problem at the ATM?

Just because all the other systems can be "hacked" to change the election results, doesn't mean we should add another vulnerable system. Especially one that we knew ahead of time is vulnerable and one in which a single person could potentially fubar the results on a national level. Why should we "go live" with a product that we know is easy to break?

I'm not saying that I don't support electronic voting, I just don't support it in its current state.





I'm not saying open source is THE solution. I strongly believe it will have to be part of the solution. Open source relates not just the source code but the design schematics as well.

I'm not trying to say I have the solution. There are much smarter people than me who have already come up with alternatives and changes to e-voting and paper voting systems that would work much better than anythign I could come up with. What I was trying to get across in my OP was that is there is no way to ensure neutrality in the manufacturing of voting machines the way things currently are.

One of the reasons you don't see 12,000 screaming about ATM's is for the mere fact that they are nominally impacted by ATM hackers. Most impacted by ATM fraud is only is the bank since customer information is not stored on ATM's. Here is a prime example of how some ATM's have been defrauded.

Matter of fact you can google a how to guide and start sipping those margaritas tonight. But then, not sure they serve margaritas at state pens

I didn't say that an ATM isn't hackable but it's not as easy as these voting machines. You will never get a system that is 100% secure, but some systems are locked down enough or hard enough to break into that either only very skilled/motivated people can get into them and with a considerable amount of planning and effort (real hacking takes months or years of planning...not 3 minutes like the movies). The voting systems can be taken down in what some claim is about a minute! What kind of Quality Assurance is that?

Well, who made the voting machines before? IBM, Shoup and AVM (Automatic Voting Machines), Voltronic, Westinghouse, American Information Systems, Election Systems and Software. So which one of these is the honest company? More honest than Diebold?



IEEE is working on a standard



IEEE
Voting Equipment Standards

Tried to look it up to no avail but some people at I think Stanford hack the system and stole an election on a mock run, sure all it says is it can be done. Personally I think everyone should be handing out some outrage over that fact that it can occur, regardless of political affiliation one thing you should give a darn about is that our democracy is not cheater, and our votes nulled out.

Personally I think any system that is computerized should not be the hand of one particular company, and actually should have to be bounced around quite a few groups of inspectors from a large amount of variance overall in say quality control in that aspect, with the idea being simply trying to crush the possibility of such corruption occurring overall, I think anything less is simply being lazy and not caring about your vote or your fellow citizens or democracy for that matter.

I know if its computerized, it can be hacked in some way, heck back in the day you could get protocols giving up, or how they actually work, or how the internet works by simply hitting print when the security software at the site popped up and said you cant look at this, that’s all you had to do was hit print and you could then learn what data goes where on internet protocols, boy that made me comfortable. This problem has since been fixed, but it did exist at one point, simply as your address bar use to be able to get you places rather easily, sometimes people just don’t notice things.

Its made worse not only because its a complex system as inventor pointed out, hardware and software, but that such machines could be put on a network That makes it even more scary. People with onstar in there cars, believe it or not some people out there found a way to hack that so they can listen in on you at all times, a simple bug that basically left the system running at all times was found and then stopped, certain chips use to be able to be addressed directly over the net knowing its serial number or something, I think those were pent 4s, first generation or something, since then fixed, but as we all know the web is literally loaded with all forms of corruption, heck some person in China could be reading this before I even post it and I would not know really, because my computer is out on the net and filled with literally untold numbers of aspects that can be hacked or corrupted.

The simple number of ways to then corrupt a computer system at this point is really staggering, and on that we now in turn basically invest our democracy in that chance of corruption, everyone should be shocked at this and demand the highest forms of security possible, I would not object to a temporary tattoo from a machine going out as your receipt that you cant do away with for at least one month after voting lol.

After that fact, the idea is that it may not be the company, and this should not be a partisan issue, its the idea that corruption of such is a perfectly normal reality of that technology in a modern sense, and on that such means our democracy can be corrupted, would you really want our next president elected like that? Or any form of our government influenced by such for that matter, for that’s the reality that could actually occur all to easily in my opinion. Don’t think that’s not the holy grail to some hacker out there either.

Now this was not a hack, this is a inside job.... Needless to say I had not heard of that backdoor before. It only takes one person to hide this code in the system. In general this is only stopped by honest people working for you and having redundant groups with no contact with one another oversee the software source code. But is the perfect example of backdoors that can be put in any computer system. and why we need printed ballots.

I reviewed the IEEE standard, here is the specific security standard.
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc38/1583/...20Draft%20a.doc

all it is is a wish list. Not functional, just a very good guideline for someone to follow if one is honest and a good programmer. The verification of there criteria is to abstract to be productive in the real world.

It is a guideline and does not have specifics to stop backdoors and so on, that is left to the programmers to follow or not. also as I said the embedded RF would get past their wish list if put in.




very good link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDEBMp6uwdc
Steal an election with Diebold machine in one minute.

anyone want to take on this one. Is there anyone that this does not disturb? and there is no telling if there is an RF trigger in each of these machines.

Actually, I am very surprised how easily it is to hack into ATM's. I am equanted with a couple of chaps whom work with some major software/hardware manufactures that were hired for the purpose of preventing hacking into the manufacture databases. The reason they were hired is because of their abilities. One of the gentleman told me that it could take him about 30 seconds to hack into a string of ATM's and transfer money to any location he needed.

The voting system is a risk that needs to be addressed, don't get me wrong. I am just addressing the claims that ATM's are more secure than today's electronic voting machines. It is simular technology and both are equally at risk of being hacked.

Just a thought to add here. In Missouri we have electronic voting now (link). The State Legislature allowed it but had several requirements that had to be met in order for any machines to be approved and used. One of those requirements was that the machines have a permanent paper trail for every vote. At the time this was decided the State Legislature in Missouri had a Republican Majority, and Missouri had a Republican Governor. I am no fan of the Republican party, but from my experience here in MO it seem inappropriate to blanket label them as the evil doers here.

This is an important issue, and one that needs to be addressed district by district. However, coloring this as a partisan issue does it a disservice. I lived in a Republican controlled town when I grew up, and voter fraud, back room deals, and political reprisals were the norm. I lived in a Democratically controlled town as a single adult and voter fraud, back room deals, and political reprisals were the norm. Now I live in a "non-partisan" town (elected officials do not run as members of any party), and still voter fraud, back room deals, and political reprisals were the norm. The wrong-doing is truly non-partisan.

This is a non-partisan issue. There are those who would abuse the system in all parties. They are commonly called the elected. And there are those who should be fighting to stop such abuse. They are commonly called the electorate. However, all the partisan sniping, blame laying, and sound-bites have turned the majority of the potential electorate into apathetic pessimists who feel their vote, or attention is a complete waste of time since all of the politicians, on all sides, lie to them all the time anyway.

Question for the debate : Is it appropriate for the manufacturer of voting machines to be contracted out to partisan sources or is there a way to ensure neutrality in the manufacturing of voting machines?

If we are going to judge who gets to participate in this by whether or not they are partisan we would have to get rid of most of the people who care enough to be involved. For example, in my county you can only be an Election Judge if you are a declared Democrat or Republican. We maintain an equal numbers of people from both parties on the election board, at the polls, and in every process associated with the elections. We do this so that these individuals will work as a "check and balance" against each other to avoid fraud by those who run the process. Of course that means that Independents like myself, cannot help or volunteer which I personally have a problem with, but "dems da breaks" (though it might make for a great topic).

In the case of Missouri's new machines, the voters can see what is entered on the paper receipt, as well as on the screen. They can review how they voted (to avoid mistakes) before submitting their votes (which they could not do with the old punch cards). The large screen is far easier for older and / or poor-sighted voters to read. Also, an election judge has to personally activate the system for every voter with their coded (8-track-like) cartridge which helps prevent abuse (people entering votes before polls open, after they close, or entering more then one vote while voting), because these "keys" are controlled by the election judges at the polls who are equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.

Overall the long standing processes and requirements in place, along with the new machines and the new policies to go with them continue to ensure that the election process is not tampered with in the State of Missouri (at the polls and election board level anyway).

We had a real opportunity to prevent the real fraud issues we have in Missouri. That being non-residents, the dead, and others, voting. But the Voter I.D. measure has failed at this point. In my little town, I know of two people that no longer live in the city, yet still voted in the last Mayor's election. I also know of (so far) 14 people, who are no longer with us, but are still on the registered voter roles in my area (several of which are suspected of voting by absentee ballot from the grave). The real issues we have in my area is fraud perpetrated at the individual voter level. However, there are politicos out there who seem willing to fight to the death to prevent the concept of voters having to mandatorily present ID at the polls. Again, the elected are fighting a measure that would protect the electorate. The stated reasons vary, but the real reasons speak volumes about these folks.

The issues of voter fraud and the prevention of it are truly non-partisan. ALL sides look for ways to hedge their bet and topple the playing field in their favor. It is ultimately up to the electorate of all sides to monitor, prevent, and when necessary, prosecute abuses here. Unfortunately, it is the elected, those who are most likely to abuse the process or benefit from abuse who write the laws that govern it. The fox (the elected) has been guarding this hen house for a long, long time and when a chicken is missing here or there the farmer (the electorate) could care less because discussions of election laws is so very "boring". They love the sensational stories about possible fraud and abuse, but they use the news coverage of possible solutions to prevent such things in the future as a sleep aid.

On top of the fact that the machines are easy to crack, it seems that even when there's no foul play the machines don't work:

cite


I'd be interested to hear of any stories of people voting straight Republican and having the machine cast straight Democrat.

overlandsailor The electronic keys basically do nothing to stop electronic vote fraud with either backdoors or RF or other modes of attack. Or further up the chain.

Next if your machines are like Nevada, where we have had printed receipts and we are totally electronic touch screen for several elections it is still easy to steal if you made the machines. That is why I request that your printed vote is put in your hand. And you deposit it into the ballot box. These machines in Nevada do not allow you to touch your ballot. With that what I can do as a programmer is print a ballot after you leave and spoil your. There is a method of spoiling ballots because you review your ballot and confirm it. I could do this as you walk away. And in cases like here they do not dod a random precinct count. It even a joke in Ohio when Blackwell was required to do a random check he picked the random polls locations... ie defying what math/science declares random. Random to him was what ever number say 20 precincts he specifically wanted to do. Not drawing a number from a bowl which is real random. so he says he abide by the law.

Thus I believe at the end of an election after the first results come in each major party as a minimum of 3 parties should be allowed to pick a certain number of precincts as determined by standard AQL charts. They pick anywhere they want by what the results are. IE if the purple party found a discrepancy in a normally strong precinct and the voting is not fitting, they would pick that precinct. This is done before the ballot box is moved on the spot with members of all parties present. In general this would be less than 1% of the vote.

what people do not understand a manual hand count of a machine printed vote is easy, it says donald duck and there are no chads or having to find where hole 2 d is or pencil mark at 17 f is "?". It says Donald duck on a computer print out so no grey area. No spoiled ballots or questionable interpretation.

As far as the dead voting and such. From what I have read it is a bit of a urban legend. While dead people may still be on the registered voters list we just do not have wholesale fraud, ie the numbers are very small but it needs to be stopped. I would be in favor of a eye scan system that has a central database. When you ask for your absentee, or go vote this database would be used. Thus you would have to bring the dead [person into the poll. the problem with this is some people will not want to do it. To me we would make it illegal for any government agency to use the right eye, that the left eye can be used for other purposes. This would allow for voting with an untraceable system by other governemt agencies. Though any person convicted of a felony would have their eyes scanned, if that state stopped that class of voter.

Here is a document that my bet is would demonstrate this number of error votes is so small it is inconsequential. Why else would they be sitting on it and not releasing it before the election.

https://www.kintera.org/site/c.gnKMIPNnEkG/...34A2C1F4AFC85BF
Tell the EAC: “Release the Report!”


the dead voting numbers are small. and it explains how there are errors, remember someone has to enter the data in the computer, so like when entering the birthday it may have been 1979 but the 7 is really a 9. As they point out the people that are hired are not paid well so you get what you pay for.

A retinal eye scan would mean no one has to register, you just show up and vote on the day of the election or show up and get a absentee scan and sign a signature card. Then you can do absentee till you elect to change it. ID cards and registering to vote are not good requirements, they are costly and subject to data entry error. the money we save from this would well pay for a eyescan.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...D=2006602260301

Question for the debate : Is it appropriate for the manufacturer of voting machines to be contracted out to partisan sources or is there a way to ensure neutrality in the manufacturing of voting machines?

1. Is it appropriate for the manufacturer of voting machines to be contracted out to partisan sources[?]

I believe it is inappropriate to utilize a partisan source for voting machines. DIEBOLD has protested loudly that the Princeton study of rigging the votes via changing the software, but the corporation has not proven the evidence wrong.

2. Is there a way to ensure neutrality in the manufacturing of voting machines?

Yes. It would be time-consuming but it would involve the presence of bi-partisan or multi-partisan watchers to supervise the moving, set-up, and custody of said machines prior to any election. It would be an extension of what is done during say, the counting of absentee ballots. Representatives from both major parties must be present to ensure that it is all done accurately and above board.

I am no Luddite when it comes to technology, but I feel it would be better to use pencils and papers for recording votes. At least they cannot be made to vanish due to a computer glitch. Paper trails are useful. That's why I have already cast my absentee ballot in this election, and I would encourage others to do the same.

When it comes to voter fraud, as in people no longer living in a district voting there, or people who are no longer living in general continuing to vote...it happens, at least in my neck of the woods.

Walking for signatures on a petition to seek a Recall election for our Mayor meant I had a portion of the Registered Voters list. On that list, those organizing the effort marked who had voted in the last election, thinking they would be more likely interested in signing our petition (since just short of 2 out of 3 voters voted against the current Mayor in a 3 candidate race). Interestingly, I discovered that a family of 2 registered voters were still on the rolls for a particular address, and had voted in the last election, though the people living in that home when I visited said they had owned and lived in it for 3 years. Others showed me how known supporters of our Mayor, who had not lived in town for years, were also still registered here and had voted in the last election. Even worse there was a resident, we know to have been deceased for years who supposedly voted in the last election (a relation of the current Mayor). Considering the fact that the Mayor won by 5 votes that is rather unsettling. A simple picture ID would not have solved all of these problems, but it would have certainly make it more difficult for the deceased to vote.

As for vote fraud and the voting machines you are correct, if someone tampered with the machine or software before it was given to the county the machines could have been rigged. However, at best that would mean they were rigged at that one election. You would not even know who was going to be on the ballot in future elections. The machines remain the property of my county and are stored in County Election Board facilities. So, now that we are on to future elections since the original purchase it seems unlikely that the machines could be tampered with. Perhaps, the software could have been rigged to give one party's "straight ticket" vote an edge over the other, but in Missouri, a "straight ticket" vote is no longer an option.

Each County Election Board in Missouri is made up, by design, of an equal number of registered Republicans and registered Democrats. Each polling place, by design, is manned by an equal number of registered Republicans and registered Democrats. Everything done with the machines, from setting them up to packing them away is done with a minimum of 2 people, 1 from each party being involved. I find it difficult to see how such a fraud could be committed, unless 1 or more of the party that was being robbed, went along with it.

If, those who are supposed to be protecting the vote for their party went along with the other party to steal an election, I imagine that could not be stopped. However, I see no evidence that this could not have happened under the old punch card system we had before it.

What we gain from these machines is a ballot that is easier for people to read, the elimination of easy "straight ticket" voting, a way to verify that we did not make a mistake on our ballot before we cast it, a secondary review source for our votes (one being the electronic data, the other being the printed receipt every voter can see as it prints), and the inability to cast a vote without an election official actively enabling you to do so. The system is not perfect. But given the choice between the punch card system we had, and the machines we have now, I would gladly take the machines.

Regardless of the method of collecting votes, if the vote is cast fraudulently, it is still wrong. This machine does nothing to prevent that kind of fraud, nor did the punch card, nor can any system I have heard of before. That kind of fraud has existed throughout history, and continues to exist. When you consider the small margins of victory in several elections in recent history, It surprises me that anyone would suggest that the effect of the dead voting and the like is "very small". In my local election, 5 votes decided who won the Mayor's seat. And we know someone who was deceased cast a ballot in that election. That means 20% of the majority. The effect is not small.

The argument against voter ID cards in Missouri came down to the fact that a women, who needed her birth certificate and marriage license from another state, could not afford the fees to get those documents (if they had been in Missouri they would have been free). The simple solution would be to budget a fund to repay such fees to voters (to avoid the poll tax argument). However, I personally think it is ridiculous, that we have to cancel an effort that simply required a free State issued photo ID card (currently carried as a drivers license by about 90% of Missouri Residents) because a few people did not properly take care of their personal papers. Doesn't personal responsibility enter into this at all?

There is no system of gathering ballots that is not susceptible to fraud. What prevents it is that every Republican involved in the election process in Missouri has a Democrat looking over their shoulder and vice versa. What those election officials cannot do without a photo ID is know that the person coming to vote at the polls is actually the registered voter they claim to be.

Inventor, I have to assume you don't know alot about inventing because I've yet to hear a plausible idea from you. Your post(s) are absurd.

First, the idea that one party (typically, the republicans) is so smart, that they can fool 100% of the opposing party (typically, the democrats) is ridiculous. Every argument geared towards voter fraud acts as if no procedures and controls - implemented by both parties - ever exist. This conspiracy is so vast, that no democrat has ever figured it out, nobody has ever been caught, and nobody in a conspiracy of this sized has leaked. It fails the smell test on so many levels, it makes my head hurt to see how many people still believe in this crap.

Does voter fraud happen? Of course it does - it's been happening since people figured out how to stuff the ballot box. But not on any grand systematic scale. Unbelievably, honest democrats and republicans in each district do their best to ensure your vote is counted accurately. They take steps to make sure you don't carry your toolbox into the election booth to take an evoting machine apart to carry out your nefarious plan. And every evoting company - Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S - are smart enough to design double entry databases and table triggers that make alterations without detection virtually impossible.

Have you ever designed a relational database before? A double entry accounting system? Worked in a team environment where every one of your co-workers has seen your code?

And by the way, even if you could carry out this ridiculous plan, how do you know who to vote for? Republican sounding names? Are programmers too stupid to know how to print out the correct receipt but save bogus information? And assuming your Donald Duck example would work, how do you handle the other 20 issues on the same system that would have to be hand counted?

And if you really, really wanted to cheat in an election, wouldn't you demand hand ballots? It would be very difficult to find highly skilled programmers that would throw it all away for a long jail term as opposed to having 8 year olds - who could never be prosecuted - stuff ballot boxes.

All these ideas that elections could be rigged using evoting would be credible except for one thing: No scenario has ever included the variable of honest election workers on both sides of the aisle, election procedures, validation procedures, and general election controls.

The guy on BradBlog asked me to write a column for him regarding this subject because I'm more than just a little informed on this subject and technology. I refused because I don't want to forego my internet anonymity and become his punching bag from people who have no clue - just like some of the crap I read here.

I have to agree with DR on some issues here- first off- to pull this off, you have to have too many poeple "in the know" in a scam to help ONLY the republican party- any conspiracy requiring more than 4 poeple means that, at some point, someone is going to blab. This is just the nature of criminal behavior- no one can ever keep thier mouths shut!

If you have an administration and party as incompetant and riddled with stupidity and inconsistancies as we have in the Repubican party today- it goes against all mathematical possibility that poeple this inept at EVERYTHING but keeping the religious right behind them, could pull off a complex thing like this.

Seriously inventor- I believe that it CAN be done like you say it can- however, not by the POEPLE you think will do it.

Seriously Inventor- do you think an administration this incompetant could pull off what you are talking about? And make it just advantage the republicans?

carlitoswhey,

I want to make this clear: The Diebold machines in Colorado do not issue paper receipts to voters. The voter can examine the receipt after voting to make sure all the choices are correct, and once the vote is acknowledged by a tap on the screen or on a button, the paper receipt gets rolled into a secured box that is handled just like other paper-based votes. Envision a continuous roll of paper that goes across a magnifying window. You can lift the window too if it gets in the way, but you don't get to rip out the receipt without screwing up the machine. Sheesh, I bet this happens tomorrow, dang anarchists.

So, voters in this state don't have to keep receipts. The state does it for them. It is the responsibility of the state to secure the votes -- well, precincts anyway. Collectively, they are the state.

How is the paper vote handled? Does an "impartial" human read them and keep a count? Do you trust a republican to honestly and fairly count your vote, or does Colorado have all the honest republicans not in on the nation-wide Diebold scam in other precincts? If Diebold were to stop making evoting equipment, would you trust Sequoia, ES&S, and future evoting companies, or are they as corrupt and nefarious as Diebold?

My point is, is how is paper receipts better? If I'm smart enough to make an evoting program miscount votes for an unspecified issue (the machines and software are used over and over), how hard do you think it would be for me to show you a nice pretty, accurate receipt, but save bogus data to the recording media?

If the paper receipts are hand counted, how could you ever possibly trust the republican election workers (the culprits normally associated with stealing elections) to count accurately when cheating is even easier? Heck, I'd like to see how all these hand ballots could be hand counted in a reasonable amount of time. It may take weeks to find the results of an election (not saying it's a bad thing - but there are a whole whole host of issues including recounts. Elections could take months).

If you take the receipt with you, people would be selling votes. You have a proof of purchase. And if your boss sees your receipt and your boss is of the opposing party, you might find yourself terminated for no particular reason which incidentally, is a valid reason in hire-at-will states.

People get hung up and paper receipts and for the life of me, I can't see how that makes a difference. Cynical people will get their way one day and have us all go back to pregnant dimpled hanging chads while the visually disabled will go back to playing pin the tail on the donkey.

You want to steal an election? Put up a candidate worth a crap.


It doesn't matter what inventor thinks he can do - it can't be done. Each precinct has election workers that are committed to each vote being accurately counted. They will do whatever is necessary to prevent fraud. It's not perfect and some things slip past them, but on the whole, both republican and democratic poll workers are generally honest.

This whole blowup started with some dimwit at Johns Hopkins University named Avi Ruben. He made inventor-esque claims that launched many anti-evoting entities. And what was Diebold's response?

Simple - Avi Ruben had never actually worked in an election. It was obvious. And true enough, Ruben never had. His thesis relied on no election controls being in place. So, nutty ideas that you typically hear about while technically possible can't be done because of the hard work of volunteers at each precinct.

Ruben finally went to work at an election in Baltimore City and was treated with respect by his fellow election workers. When he was done, he recanted much of his study because Diebold was correct - nobody is going to let you bring in a toolbox to open up your evoting station and install hardware/software to do alter the vote. Election workers do their job very, very well 99% of the time. So, that argument has shifted to the systems that collect all the votes. That's another argument for another time, but I'll give credit and say that premise is somewhat less nutty (like nobody ever thought about what criminals could do to alter elections and put your apparently incompetent company out of business).

So, how are all the evoting cynics dealing with yesterday's election?

Did yesterday prove systematic fraud does not exist, or did it prove all the secret re[ublican vote-fixers simply didn't see the secret bat-signal go up signaling them to start rigging elections?

Seriouly, if all this fraud exists, what happened yesterday? If I'm not mistaken, more evoting machines were used more than anytime before. Many precincts had problems, but they have problems with the "old" equipment as well.

Wow faster than a new your minute someone took the bait.... hook line and stinker....

yep according to this logic gee the dems slottered the republicans so there can not be vote fraud...

So you are saying the makers of these machines are so honest like the rest of the republicans, that there were no illegal activities in yesterdays elections. Because all republicans are honest. Gee I thought that was what the election was over the dis-honestly and lying of the republicans to a scale never seen. So do I have that correct because we did not catch all the republican dirty tricks there were none. and the people making the voting machines are much more honest than the other republicans.

My point about how corrupt these companies are is they have known in the industry for 20 or more years the issue of printed receipts. It was a topic of discussion within that industry back then. And anyone with a brain would have built all machines with printers. The only reason you wouldn't is so you can have backdoors and corruption. Small Printers have been low cost for at least 20 years. There is NO logical reason not to have them. And no company in the field can plead ignorance, that is just too stupid, they go to the industry trade shows.

Now when the numbers are this large shaving off significant points is far more difficult. Lets see how the exit polls matched for one thing.

Now because you are claiming republicans are as a group so honest lets take a look. We will look at first as a example of the guilty pleas and conviction of 3 top republicans last year for phone jamming. Think about that, 3 top operatives were guilty of jamming democrat phones on election day. So here is a traceable offense to stop democrats from voting. Does this show republicans will go to this level to win? If they will go to this level is there any level they will not stoop to? Now here is how corrupt this crime was, there were from somewhere 20-30 phone calls to the white house from one of these republican convicted criminals during and up to the election. The white house would not release who's phone number that was for some reason, and for some reason there was no special prosecuter to find out who in the white house was involved in this criminal activity.

To demonstrate that the republicans were still willing to go to all levels, I will give the examples I heard over the last couple days.. I have heard a tape played by a person who got a phone call from a person representing they were with the state election board and the person said that Mr. Democrat you can not vote tomorrow, you are registered to vote in this other state and our state. If you cast a vote tomorrow you will be arrested. That is illegal to tell to the voter as it is false...

Next one I heard a person call in to AAR, she was a poll worker and she had a message on her answering machine saying this is so and so and we hope you are going to vote your place to vote is bla bla bla. Well since she was a poll worker she knew where the polling place is and it was not where this robophone call was telling her to do so. This is a violation of the law.

Next democrats were bombarded by robo calls all hours even 2 am and even calling back within minutes of the person hanging up, with the message leading off with the name of a democrat. But that democrat did not hire any such company to do this. This made many voters mad and had the effect of making people mad at the democrat. This is also illegal.

So if people are convicted of phone voter issues at the top of the republican party how can you claim that republicans would be honest about electronic voting when at least 3-4 of them were convicted felons. One convicted of putting in backdoors in accounting software.

here are some electronic vote issues.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?opti...7&Itemid=26
National Issues
All Four Major E-Voting Machines Flip Votes in Early Voting
By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA
November 05, 2006








SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Voting appears to be very popular in Daggett County, Utah.



http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/po...y-in-utah.html
http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politica...ly-in-utah.html


From you previous post, the person does not take thier printed ballot home with them. But your sarcasm of being fired is definitely true. During the last election a girl had a AAR sticker on her car and her boss at the company met her at a grocery store and told her that she could not have that sticker i and fired her.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/03/09...24_273_8_06.txt

Also DR can you post links to the stories you gave in 27.

Is it appropriate for the manufacturer of voting machines to be contracted out to partisan sources or is there a way to ensure neutrality in the manufacturing of voting machines?

Yes it is possible (I'm speaking as a Ph.D. Electrical/Systems Engineer with many years under my belt in both clean and dirty electronic systems design and building/testing)! It is true that much (anything) can be hidden in "modern IC's and software" based electrical systems! That makes discovery of fraud, either in manufacture or operation of "vote processing equipment" difficult (nigh on to impossible) if one uses these "styles of systems".

However, I maintain that with paper ballots, and with so-called "old technology and components (maybe circa 1955 designs/components), i.e. insist on relays, tubes, high voltages and currents (helps "burn up" any sophisticated IC based tricks,", swap-able parts, optically transparent "electronic boards" and structural parts (not presently all off-the-shelf items, but do-able I believe), lumped components, such as discrete capacitors, resistors, etc., that the paper ballots, read with such old fashioned components readers and systems, that it is then possible, with good contract specs, open manufacturing and open "old style" quality control, that we can have pretty safe, fraud free voting systems.

However, all this must be rigorously "systems engineered"!! It also must be well policed and inspected, and the paper ballot "life cycle" fully modeled as a system and fully "checked out for 'loop holes' (called black hatting in the trade)" to make sure it's all highly spoof proof.

The contracting and execution if trulyfully openly inspected would "let" us use anyone to do the build; but, it would be nice to have it done by the "mystical honest men".

Nice to have another person who has a deep understanding of hardware ring in. I agree with all you said here and see that there was not anything you did not grasp. My comment though I find you have hit it on the head all the way. What I see in your post that may confuse the lay person is you give a sense of it can be done hope that many would take as oh it can be done.

Now because, not you but another poster pretty much attacked my credibility I will note several things for him. I do thank you for posting your prestigious credentials. To the other poster, I am an engineer, I have been tested by a company to be in the upper 5% of engineers aptitude. I have been VP of Engineering and had a team of 20 engineers and techs working for me, I have been director of R&D of a northern Cal company, I have many US and international patents and pending. Some are simple and some are what I consider simple but are very advanced in concept, the simple ones make more money. My guess is for patents I am in the 0,1 percentile, I have sold patents before even over 7 figures, the present one I hope in 3-5 years will fetch 8 figures, I have won several international awards for my inventions, in major industries; one alone had over 20 judges from over 20 countries out of 4 catagories. These were major industry shows if not the largest in the world. My first invention I was paid for was within one month of my fist job out of college. I have done similar hardware projects where I did the entire hardware and wrote the firmware for a micro-controller. on a project for humanity I am working on I have about 10 PhD and MDs who have signed a letter of recommendation for support so that I can someday get funding. Though other poster seems to think making a voting system is difficult and needs all kinds of teams. I can tell you I can make a more secure one all by my lonesome. This is a simple system that basically just adds. Yes I could write the entire firmware for such a system. Geeeeeeee you can not be simpler than than that. I can also tell you I can hide backdoors with the present way machines are made and tested. Lek even confirms this in his post, you can not go into the chip level testing.

Now Lek back to your post, I am just trying to make sure others do not get the wrong idea from your statements. As you noted, checking at the chip level just can not be done as I said. Thus anything can be done with this chip level interceptor as determined by the person who puts this chip in. EI I would do a ASIC and put it in line with the keypad scan codes from the input device.

Though you elude to another major problem with manufacture you do not really clearly spell it out, "mystical honest men". I agree with this but it is completely unrealistic to the real world to ever be guaranteed of such a person or company, there are to many week nodes in the entire process.. Thus the only way is redundant checks.

I have suggested that we have each political party bring in their own scanner and each printed paper vote is put through each parties scanners, then the vote must match all parties scanners and the one from the machine that the voter voted on. This provides a redundancy that allows for counting of the actual ballots easily if there is a discrepancy. The partys are responsible for the security of their scanning machines all the way to the polling place.




Here is another perfect example that has come to light. Seems 18,000 votes in one county have disappeared. This is in Florida, and with the extrapolation of normal voting this has cost a democrat the house seat. The dem lost by about 400 votes, and from historical data they know the probability with other counties what it would be. She would have won by 600 votes. But for some reason the 18,000 people voted for dog catcher but not their representative in the district. It was 13% under-vote and other counties with under-votes votes were 2% right next door. And looking at absentee ballots it should have been around 2%, but absentee ballots are paper so it can be confirmed, amazing how that works. Gee the secretary of state of florida does not care... geeeeeeeeeeee go figure.........

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001972.php


http://blogs.chron.com/kuffsworld/2006/11/...in_florida.html




http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/us/polit...amp;oref=slogin

Perhaps you should have read the articles that you linked.


I saw no where in the articles you provided where Ms. Cobb said "The Secretary of State does not care." Quite the opposite, in fact.

And what does this one glitch in one race have to do with biased manufacturers of voting machines, pray tell? The information is in the New York Times, for God's sake. Those mythical honest men have found a problem and are investigating. I wouldn't be surprised if this all goes the Democrats way in the end, but of course you will have moved onto another black box voting conspiracy by then.

You did notice that the Democrats won control of the House and Senate, right? Is this all part of the plan?

this is too funny, on several levels. For one he who cast that first stone.... do you actually read the references before accusing someone they do not read their links.....

Here from the very first one I posted... read the very first paragraph.......

FL-13: Paper Analysis Shows Glitches May Have Cost Dem Race
By Paul Kiel - November 9, 2006, 11:55 AM


Now when I say she does not care, well she doesn't care about the electronic issue/fraud. Maybe you are not informed enough, but there is no paper trail. So carlitoswhey what will a audit show............ NOTHING, still 18000 voted that have disappeared........................ Granted you may not not have been involved in technology, but that is the entire point of this thread. With electronic once the damage has been done there is NO WAY TO GET THE DATA. The machine count is none for 18,000, no way to verify. Unless the rightys channel the data in, but that has already been done.........

So do you think that 13% of the voters came to vote and did not vote for the house seat? yet no other place in the entire state, my guess in the entire US had a 13% no vote for a fed rep race. And as pointed out the absentee PAPER ballots showed in this county it was a 1.8 percent no vote. Yep they vote for dog catcher but not the rep... Now you understand why I vote absentee......... I want the probability of my vote eventually counting higher. I want my vote to count, and any true american should want all americans votes to be counted.

Right, well, who should I believe, the New York Times, or "tpmmuckraker" contributor Paul Kiel? Or the secretary herself? Let me think... I mean really, Paul Kiel says that she won't investigate, but the New York Times says that she's sending a team to do an audit. I defer to Mr. Kiel, after all, he writes for the prestigious "L Magazine," and that means he knows exactly what the Secretary of State in Florida is up to. Whenever I think - Florida Politics - I think "What does L Magazine say about this?" You know - L Magazine, "New York City's Event Guide." I mean, you of course did some research and have verified that the highly respected, heavily researched Mr. Keil has left his New York City apartment, flown to Florida and asked the Secretary herself, right? Looked her in the eyes, right? He's not just a blogger speculating on the issue, right?

I'm quite aware that there is no paper trail, and I'm quite aware of the discrepancy. I wouldn't be surprised if that county re-voted or some other extraordinary measure to fix things. I support a paper trail for electronic voting.

What does "unless the rightys channel the data in" mean please?

And what does any of this have to do with "partisan" machine manufacturers, the subject of this topic?

So you are aware of there is no paper trail, so how do you propose to find these votes? an audit... that is laughable.. as I said is she going to channel them...

Here, lets get a few things straight, Though the NYT once in a while practices real journalism, I do not believe they are partisan liberal bias. Their board of directors is who????? AAR is partisan bias. NYT has/had a moron Judith Miller who seemed to channel from above and was printing going to war over false channeled evidence being given to her from apparently sources? Channeling is the tern more appropriate from Woodwards interview with Bush when he said the decision to invade Iraq was from his father. Not meaning Bush Sr. So channeling from above is a term for rightys when they use some unfactual methodology to do things like go to war. IE they do not need reason they have their faith to make decisions. IE science is not a acceptable method or the best way to make decisions. So just as in this election, the Florida sec of state could care less about fixing or getting at the root of the problem. She is just accepting an audit which does not get to the problem.

Now let me try to explain to you, she is just playing the game of propaganda, which you seem to let her get away with. she is telling everyone she is going to audit, like that is going to do diddly...... Any professional or competent knows this is not going to do anything or get to the bottom of this. A investigation on the other hand would be getting into the design of these machines requesting the manufacturer to disclose all data and source code and all facts. See here is where you accept the two as being the same, an audit and investigation are not equal. Where you seem to be satisfied with an audit and re-vote and it is a closed subject?

I agree that there should be some type of a revote, but that again does not get to the root of the problem and of this thread. We can not trust our election system anywhere there is a electronic manipulateable node. We must have a redundant checks and a verifiable means..

Now this blogger seemed to be quoting local papers so I checked his sources. Seems we can accept what the spokesperson for the sec of state said....

http://heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art.../NEWS/611090343

Wow...very impressive. Let me list my credentials:

I barely finished high school. So, I have no right to discredit nobody's credibility based on education. I question your credibility because your ideas are nutty.

All day every day, customers call me and and ask how to assemble their parts on an assembly line with automation. I get the details of what their goal is and figure out how to do it. Once I get that done, I get our mechanical designer to detail equipment, me and our controls guy figure out the electrical, hydraulic, and/or pneumatic design. I write the software from the machine level all the way up to the enterprise system(s) interface (SQL Server to Programmable controllers, etc). I breadboard stuff all the time for specialized devices (light sources for vision systems, laser control, etc).

I design more in one week than most people do in a lifetime. 80% of my consulting business customers are universities (so much for all those fancy titles). They dream up this crap, but can't figure out how to make it work. And I make lots of money fixing their mess.

And why am I so successful at what I do? Because my stuff works and people make money off it.

I could dream up all these hidden chips, triggers, yadda yadda yadda all day long. I could give my customers a design that would make me look like the smartest guy in the world, but all lack one thing - implementation. No