By John Gideon, www.VotersUnite.Org and www.VoteTrustUSA.Org May 15, 2006
Yes, the wheels are wobbling on the locomotives. The vendors — ES&S, Diebold, and the rest — attempt to keep a stiff upper lip as they both fail to perform, yet continue collecting tax-payer dollars from the county election coffers. Meanwhile some elections officials have just turned a blind-eye to what is happening while they continue to make excuses for their vendors: The private corporate American Electronic Voting Machine behemoths that are being paid to take over America’s Public Electoral system.
And the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) which was put in place by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), theoretically, to keep all of this from occurring? Well, all they do is raise their hands and shrug and tell anyone who asks, that they don’t do voting systems certification so they just don’t know anything. The Sergeant Schultz Defense, perhaps?
And the corporate media? It took the announcement of a huge security chasm with the Diebold TS and TSx touch-screen machines for them to finally wake up and realize the voters in our country may like to hear a bit about what is happening with their elections. Of course, each media outlet spins it in their own way. The Wall Street Journal, reported on the Diebold issue with little or nothing from the computer scientists while overloading their article with plenty of misinformation from Diebold and their showcase state of Maryland. The New York Times did a good job of reporting both sides. The Rev. Moon’s United Press International joined the WSJ in mis-reporting and giving their pro-corporate, pro-electronic bias spin. But, hey! The media has woken up a little. Let’s hope they will now sit up and take notice and not go back into hibernation.
This next Tuesday we have three more states holding primary elections. Oregon, Kentucky and Pennsylvania are the next locomotives on the tracks. Pennsylvania is of special concern because of the number of ES&S and Diebold counties and the fact that this is the first election to be held on new electronic voting machines in almost every county.
Diebold’s Perfect Storm
This week was the week for the long-awaited revelation of a hole in Diebold’s Direct Recording Machine’s (DRE) security. This hole in security is comparable to the size of the eye in the “Perfect Storm”. Initial information about this security problem was discussed in last week’s “Train Wreck” and was reported prior to that by The BRAD BLOG.
On Thursday, BlackBoxVoting.Org who organized the inspections of Diebold TSx DREs in Emery County, Utah, released a lightly-redacted report, for security reasons, of Finnish Computer Scientist Harri Hursti’s revelations from the examination. An un-redacted copy of this report was sent to many federal and state officials in hope they will take the steps necessary to close this gaping security hole.
It must be stated that none of this crucial information would be available to America without the assistance and integrity of Bruce Funk, who, as the Emery County Clerk, noticed a problem with the Diebold TSx voting machines that were delivered to him. He contacted BlackBoxVoting.Org who brought Harri Hursti over from Finland to inspect the machines along with computer security specialists from Security Innovations. If Bruce Funk had not cared so much about the voters in his county, and ultimately in the whole country, this security hole ? which Diebold has admitted to building into their machines purposely to make it easier to update software — would have gone unnoticed publicly for who knows how long. Unfortunately Mr. Funk must now fight to get his job back because Diebold lashed out against him and the state and county took their side and turned their back on Mr. Funk.
What is the reaction to this from Diebold and from some of the states? David Bear, a spokesman for the company says:
Meanwhile, Deborah Hench, San Joaquin County California Registrar of Voters and ardent Diebold supporter says:
Maryland Elections Administrator, Linda Lamone, an even more ardent Diebold supporter had this to say:
From Utah we have Joe Demma, Chief of Staff in the Lieutenant Governor’s Office who supports Diebold and has apparently supported removing the 23-year elected Bruce Funk from his job says:
All except Funk who found the problems in the first place, I presume?
And from Mark Radke, another Diebold ‘talking-head’ official and apologist who’s been singing the same tired song for years as he’s been pushing his company’s faulty wares:
The lack of concern by these State Officials and Diebold Officials (the differences between the two are often very slight if any) and their attempts to minimize the situation stand in marked contrast to the comments of computer scientists across the country.
Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is an examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania said:
Douglas W. Jones, a professor of computer science at the University of Iowa says:
Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University computer science professor had this to say:
And what of the questions that should be asked? Diebold has known about this huge hole in their security since they installed it. Why are they now claiming it was just discovered?
And why has the Election Assistance Commission had nothing to say about this security issue?
Hopefully these questions and more will be answered in the coming weeks and hopefully the corporate media will stick around for awhile and do their jobs. There is plenty of room for them.
Another Primary Election Failure For ES&S ? West Virginia
This past Tuesday gave us two state primaries ? Nebraska and West Virginia. While Nebraska seemed to have a quiet and fairly problem free primary election West Virginia’s was anything but error free or quiet. The same locomotive that steamrolled through Indiana and left destruction in it’s wake showed-up in West Virginia during early voting and continued through canvassing.
As we reported in last week’s “Train Wreck” Election Systems & Software (ES&S) has failed to provide voting machines, ballot programming or paper ballots to many of West Virginia’s counties to support early voting. The primary was no better. A short list gives us just a few of the problems that have affected the voters in numerous counties:
Last week we reported that Kanawha County Commissioner Kent Carper had filed a formal complaint with the Secretary of State’s office after ES&S failed to appear at public testing for the machines. ES&S agreed to a request from Kanawha County elections officials that ES&S have a technician present during the final count of all votes. However, even with the knowledge that the county had previously filed a formal complaint ES&S pulled their technician after only a couple hours. When the technician left the system went down for a few hours until elections officials could find a solution themselves.
With all of the knowledge of failures on the part of ES&S, Secretary of State Betty Ireland filed a formal complaint with the Election Assistance Commission on Wednesday. As reported by The State Journal Secretary Ireland had this to say:
“And, Ireland says, now that the election is over, strategy talks about the problems with Election Systems and Software will begin…but, “We will not and cannot discuss publicly our legal strategy. As before, we continue to work with the Attorney General’s Office to address our options”.
“The state’s selection committee chose ES&S because of its past service in the state and it’s knowledge of West Virginia election deadlines and procedures. Ireland says, “Unfortunately, we now feel ES&S let West Virginia down”.”
So much like their failure in Indiana, Oregon, California, and Arkansas ES&S has let down the voters of the state of West Virginia.
ES&S Re-Writes Their Contract With Tennessee But Forgets To Tell The State
Just this past Saturday the Tennessean reported that ES&S had decided that their contract with the state of Tennessee did not suit their plans so they changed the contract form language and added, without permission, “used equipment” language to their order form.
This means that counties in the state will now get iVotronic Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines that are being used in the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday. This way ES&S can move these machines from one state to another like filling a hole by digging another hole. You never get rid of the hole.
The state has apparently decided that they will use this breach as a bargaining chip for a better price for maintenance and other fees that they can expect to pay for the whole life of the voting machines or until ES&S decides to walk-out on their contracts.
While the state may see a chance to get something from this unethical act by ES&S some of the counties are not too happy with the situation.
“”These people have been playing games with us,” he said.”I’m not for having any used equipment.””
The Arkansas Mess Gets No Better
While ES&S seems to be gaining in Arkansas supporting their early voting it seems that every step forward they make; they take another step back. According to WPTY-TV24 while Pulaski County got the software for their ES&S iVotronics (four days late) St. Francis County got their ballots. That sounds great except that they received 75 different styles of ballots from ES&S but they only ordered 18 different ballot styles.
KAIT ? TV8 reports that many counties that were forced by ES&S to use paper ballots ran out of those ballots on Monday and Tuesday. The reporter called ES&S and spoke with an official at their printer in Omaha, Nebraska. The official claimed to know nothing about any ballot shortages. However, Craighead County Commissioners say that they have spoken many times with ES&S representatives about the ballot shortage.
Florida Counties Receive Uncertified Diebold DREs
On Friday The Daytona Beach News Journal reported that officials in Volusia County discovered that the 210 upgraded Diebold TSx DREs that they had just taken custody looked a bit different than the other DREs they had on-hand. These new machines are ‘Model D’ which are not yet certified for use by the state. And Volusia is only one of five counties who have these machines.
The News Journal reports:
Thirty of Florida’s 67 counties use Diebold voting equipment, but only five, including Volusia, got the uncertified models, said Ann McFall, Volusia County supervisor of elections.
“I think it’s an embarrassment to Diebold and the Division (of Elections),” McFall said. “I’m happy my department caught this. No other county caught this.”
Of course the state is circling-the-wagons of support for Diebold. The Orlando Sentinel reports:
“”It’s just a modification,” Nash said. She compared it to a routine software update on a home computer. “It’s very similar to that.””
And:
“Still, he listed several changes with the hardware and operating system. The changes include a new liquid-crystal display, a new “inverter” to power the LCD and changes to the motherboard to accommodate a “graphics processor, flash memory, and voltage regulators. The motherboard also includes the addition of fuses to the modem outputs to improve immunity to phone line faults,” he wrote.
“The operating system is also “slightly different,” Drury wrote. The “firmware” has not changed, he said in the e-mail.”
Excuse me? It’s the same except that it has had many changes? Now here are two locomotives running directly at each other and this in a state where the legislature cares enough about elections that they have ignored any plea for a VVPAT and made any audit illegal.
So that was the week that was. More revelations. More problems. More investigations. More voters who really don’t know if their vote was counted as it was cast. More elections officials and poll workers who have had to work long hours just to clean up what mess the vendors have left them. Meanwhile, more money in the vendor’s coffers and more opportunity for them to obfuscate and misinform the media. Maybe it will get better? Only the voters hope so.
Is there really a need to be reluctant to fully describe the "national security" issues in the Diebold machines?
Goose bumps and hair standing up on neck is not the realm of Windows CE software development.
No trophies are given out for hacking those type systems. It is for rank amateurs to cut their teeth on at most.
I read the report talking about the bootloader and other technical concepts by Hursti. There were redacted portions in the report. I had to laugh.
This info is not that secret. Here are some links of how to do the bootloader, and some source code examples (various bootloader concepts and locations, bootloader source code).
Hey, once windows or windows CE is used on voting machines, security is a historical concept, not a present concept. Everything you need to know is publicly available.
And when the damn thing won’t fly anyway, why hack the thing to make it not work properly?
Outstanding post, John! Mind-boggling, if not lobotomizing. Absolutely stupifying that this is happening in America right under our eyes with the complicity of the lapdog media. PREPOSTEROUS! And everyone probably has that MoveOn poll in their inbox now, right? Check it out and see that the Diebold emergency is ranked #17!!
MoveOn Survey
Read it and weep. Or can we do something about this…?
Also, these links here will take you to Mark Crispin Miller’s tour de force speech in Oakland on May 4th. They are a "must-listen" — even for those of you who have received my FREE MCM CD offer already. This speech is the best — (after downloading, you can speed forward past the lady speaking at the start and get right to it)
Do it now and be remotivated and have your spine re-chilled! Should last about a week at least, then listen again.
TUC Radio: Mark C. Miller speaks in Oakland on May 4th
He is our Thomas Paine. (Brad is our Edward R. Murrow.)
Cheers,
Ginny Ross
http://www.OregonVRC.org
Who is in charge over there at EAC,..
Michael Brown,.. (Brownie),..
how can that federal agency be so incompetent ?
Like the graphics,.. adds a nice dimension,.
reminds me of my old Lionel
train set,.. from when I was a kid.
This blog does such good work.
I just heard Greg Palast on Amy Goodman’s "Democracy Now!" stating that the "fix" is already in for the 2008 presidential race. How can we fight an omnipresent but invisible (or, rather, only perceptible to the truly attentive eye) force with mere honesty and integrity? Organized crime has a way of surviving and thriving that is absolutely terrifying.
Great summarization, John. Thank you!
Hi Peg! "To live outside the law you must be honest. You always said you did agree…" What goes around comes around, deah! Ain’t I cunnin!" And Old Turk – it reminded me if my old Lionel (circa 1955) too! We be groovin’! Doin’ a heckuva job, like that
Let’s assume that due to the growing popularity of Brad Blog, every citizen will soon become aware of the security flaws in these machines, and that these flaws could potentially be exploited by dishonest individuals in order to rig the election.
HERE IS THE PROBLEM: This issue is never going to have much traction with the public if the security problems are perceived as something only election insiders could exploit. Rightly or wrongly, people won’t believe that fraud by election officials will happen on a sufficient scale to change the election result.
And the election officials themselves, at whatever level, will not accept that their staff (who they have vetted, hired, and supervised) are anything less than 100% honest. So even if the machine has an obvious flaw, the official still sees no problem – because his/her staff are honset, trustworthy, and would never do anything to alter the results.
And finally, even if one believes that the election can be fixed by insiders, the public won’t really care whether the manipulation was done by machine or by one of the more traditional methods, such as stuffed ballot boxes. After all, if any investigation is fixed too, what’s the difference?
Please excuse the long set up, but here’s the point: It is necessary to show that the fix can be done by an actual voter – by definition an anonymous person who cannot be traced. Of course, the vulnerability can be pre-programmed years in advance – but it has to be a politically neutral vulnerability, otherwise the scam could be exposed by reverse engineering. The critical step is that this vulnerability must be activated and exploited by a third person in the voting booth.
I would imagine something like a combination or sequence of keys to press on the touch screen, or a button to press and hold, much like entering a service menu on a cable/satellite box or TV. Once you have access to the system, you can change the tallies, exit the "service" mode, and walk away unsuspected.
If the public understood it in this way – that a clued-in "voter" can just walk into the booth and meddle with the machine (in favor of ANY candidate or party) then there would be much more concern and outrage.
And even better – if it were widely realized that a few competing groups of computer geeks were vying for the highest honor in the hacking hall of fame by putting say, Lyndon LeRouche or Jacques Chirac into power ….
I wonder, though, if the MSM has been afraid because the republican dictatorship has info on them and they are now compromised?
The republican dictatorship admits now to spying on the MSM, perhaps because it now seems to be what the republican dictatorship sees as the norm:
"The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly seeking reporters’ phone records in leak investigations (link here, bold added).
‘It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration,’ said a senior federal official.
The acknowledgement followed our blotter item that ABC News reporters had been warned by a federal source that the government knew who we were calling" (ibid, bold added).
"Who ya gonna call" is not something the republican dictatorship asks anymore, they already know.
I feel a lot better now , knowing that the republican dictatorship is protecting me from al Queida terrorist reporters, who don’t like to talk about defective election systems in the US.
Yep, when the MSM jumped in bed with (embedded) the republican dictatorship, they became the MSM presstitutes who would be spied upon themselves.
No prophylactics in use here.
The MSM is now fully dispensable and compromised such that more and more they must do the bidding of the republican dictatorship.
And that does not include speaking truth to power … or to anyone else it seems … about the train wreck boogie they are all dancing to.
Let’s look at the EAC. There are only 4 commissioners. The real tradgy is that those 4 are merely figure heads. The "behind the curtain" fact is that there are 4 self serving folks that actually approve vendors equipment once they complete the Independent Testing, to use that term loosley. My research shows that these self serving "evaluators" are Steve Freeman, a paid for consultant by the state of California, Paul Craft, former Florida State Election director and also a paid for consultant and strong ESS supporter and Brit Williams, Georgia Elections Administrator and Diebold bag man. It is a shame that this is not national news that these paid for "consultants" have so much at stake for these money pushing vendors that no one in the free world knows who they really are.