We reported earlier this week about an ad placed on the Internet by Kelly Services seeking temporary workers for the upcoming California primary elections in San Francisco.
The ad sought workers to “assist in dropping off election voting machines and picking these machines up when voting is complete.” (See our full story and the complete text here.)
That ad has now been removed from Monster.com. We’ll try and offer some updates if we can gather any additional information about the removal of the ad.
As we noted in our original story on Tuesday, the ad was notable given CA Sec. of State Bruce McPherson’s recent approval of Diebold voting machines shortly after it was revealed, and then confirmed by his own independent analysis [PDF], that those machines were vulnerable to hackers. After the revelations, McPherson implemented what he described as increased physical security procedures to protect such machines from tampering — procedures which would seem to be out the window by allowing $11.99/hour temporary workers hired from the Internet to shuttle California’s electronic voting machines, unsupervised, before and after the election.
Apparently the systems in question in San Francisco are reportedly made by Diebold’s “rival” company ES&S. Unlike Diebold’s systems, ES&S’s have never faced the rigorous independent “hack testing” that systems made by Diebold have undergone. Given our lack of knowledge, therefore, about the security in ES&S electronic voting systems and whether or not they are any more or less prone to hacking than Diebold’s systems, it would seem that allowing unknown individuals to have unsupervisored access to those machines is equally as irresponsible as McPherson’s own less-than-safe security measures as recently prescribed for Diebold systems.
We will, of course, keep you updated with new developements as we are able to acquire them.
A sample from the original screen shot of the Internet ad posted by Kelly Services on Monster.com. Click the graphic below for the complete story…
The Young College Republicans,..
have just volunteered their time to deliver all
electronic voting machines in the state of California.
The crisis has passed,.. we can all breath free.
No story here,.. just move along.
OMG,.. keep your eye on those little bastards,..most
are computer savvy,.. whiz-kids.
There may be a larger story to followup.
Brad,
It looks like you’ve scored another blow for fair elections. Thanks – You’re the man.
I finaly received my absentee ballot yesterday and the first oval I filled in was Debra Bowen!
California 06/06/06 here we come!
Who says nobody is paying attention to this blog?
They are watching and they know that not only are we watching, we have them all figured out.
I did a quick search at the kelly site and found nothing. No delivery jobs of any type came up in the search engine at their site.
I then did a general search on voting machine delivery and came up with many links to places having problems with the manufacturers delivering.
I also came up with this: Voting machine stolen from elections judge. I don’t know if it had been covered here or not. Makes me wonder if someone is trying to figure out how to hack that type also!
Brad had the story some time ago,…
Elec Election Machine Stolen from Election Judge/Texas ; LINK
Congratulations, Brad. You’ve done it again.
Sure doesn’t make ES&S look good, does it?!
I bet they got LOTS of job applicants in record time. I wonder if anyone in the SF area will do a PRR to find out more.
Brad said: "Given our lack of knowledge, therefore, about the security in ES&S electronic voting systems and whether or not they are any more or less prone to hacking than Diebold’s systems…"
The ES&S optiscans have been shown to be unreliable.
The Harry Hurtsi demonstration orchestrated by Ion Sancho in FL was on an ES&S optiscan machine. Also, the Judge in Texas who is suing over the primary election down there, involved ES&S machines … again, I believe it was optiscan counting machines …. there were 100,000 "extra" votes.
ES&S can’t meet its contractual obligations vis-a-vis voting machines all over the country which has triggered multiple lawsuits from the states.
It would be out-of-character for the ES&S voting machines to be secure and reliable. I’d submit that ES&S is an unreliable company that has a "habit and custom" of selling unreliable equipment (making such evidence admissible in a court of law), i.e. there is SOME evidence that the voting machines are unreliable and hackable.
Sandy D said:
The Harry Hurtsi demonstration orchestrated by Ion Sancho in FL was on an ES&S optiscan machine.
Nope. That was on a Diebold optical scan machine.
As to the other thoughts about the "reliability" of ES&S. In case I was unclear, ES&S, both their machines and their company have been show, beyond a shadow of a doubt to be incredibly unreliable. They have failed in nearly a dozen states this year already to provide contracted services in a timely fashion (or at all) and their machines have failed time and time again in elections so far this year (and in previous years, of course).
The sentence of mine that you quoted above, however, dealt with the hackability and security of their machines.
While it’s proven now many times over that Diebold machines (both optical scan and touch-screen) are quickly and easily and disgracefully vulnerable to tampering and hacking at dozens of unsecured points, I’m not aware of the same type of documentation concerning vulnerabilities in ES&S’ machines.
I have little or no doubt that they are equally as vulnerable. But that’s only based on my best guess, anectodal reports, and the lengths to which they’ve gone to keep their machines from independent scrutiny by computer security experts and scientists.
Without demonstrating otherwise, there is no reason for anybody who cares about secure elections, to presume ES&S’s machines are any less hackable or any more secure than Diebold’s (and Sequoia’s for that matter).
Is, ES and S the other company in competition with Diebold actually owned by his brother so they are all in the family ?
Turk #6
Thanks, I figured it might be here somwhere!
BLUEBEAR #12
I moved your article to the tom delay and stolen ES&S machine thread – so we don’t have to hunt it
down in the future. Your article is now at the end of
the comment section of that thread.
I use Bradblog as a file cabinet,… (a zillion draw file cabinet),… a little housekeeping when you’ve got a nano-second,.. helps keep things tidy. Someone may want to read your article in the future.
Hope you don’t mind that I took that liberty.
Thanks Turk
Wallis #11
You’re referring to the Urosevich brothers, Bob & Todd. That was true up until just a few years ago.
Google for Bob and Todd Urosevich voting machine. You’ll find loads of background information.
Wallis #11
You’re referring to the Urosevich brothers, Bob & Todd. That was true up until just a few years ago.
Google for Bob and Todd Urosevich voting machine. You’ll find loads of background information.
Brad (#10), we don’t need any "proof" that the ES&S machines are hackable, because the idea that they could possibly be "unhackable" just doesn’t make sense. Even if ES&S could somehow invent a completely unhackable computing device: how could you, as a voter, know that the voting machine in front of you has that same unhackable device inside?
Did you know there are guys who will buy a classic 1980s arcade game, suffering from chip-rot, and just rip out everything inside that’s digital, and replace it with a modern single-board computer programmed to emulate the game’s original computing equipment? When you play the game, you can’t tell it isn’t original.
If Osama would give me a suitcase full of money and a stolen ES&S machine, I could program a truckload of SBCs (single-board computers) to exactly emulate the computing equipment inside the ES&S machine, except these SBCs would include a malware loader. Then I could get my "boys" hired as temp workers to lug the machines around. A few minutes alone with each machine would be enough to unscrew the case, rip out the main circuit board, and replace it with one of my SBCs. The voter and the local election officials would never know.
Note that I could do this even if the original ES&S computing equipment was somehow COMPLETELY unhackable. So the whole idea of "unhackable" just doesn’t make sense, and we don’t need any "proof" of hackability.
One wonders how many temps were hired, and for what precincts.
That could be public information … anyone in San Francisco care to call the elections office and inquire?
Brad: Thanks for clarifying that the Ion Sancho demonstration was NOT ES&S. I do think it is important to get our facts straight before confronting the powers-that-be. But Anonymous (#17) makes an important point: that chain of custody is as important as hackability.
That just reinforces my belief that we have to have paper ballots and citizen hand counting at the precinct level. If the average guy can’t find and follow his ballot there is no assurance that the "one man" got his "one vote" counted…. the bottomline of democracy.
I do think there is a constitutional challenge to be made against the use of electronic machines for voting. Many are being deprived of their right to vote…and their right to have their vote counted.
I wonder what the Iraqi’s would have said if they were offered suspect voting machines? I doubt that they could have elected a government without a civil war because they would have been smart enough to understand how this process could be corrupted!
This is a great story of cause and effect.
I think they must be getting scared. If anyone had discovered these ads a year ago, I think they would have ignored it thinking they were invincible.
Ad:
"We are looking for punctual, hard-working, stupid people who don’t ask questions, to transport voting machines. Just throw them into the back of your reliable transportation, and drive them to our vote-manipulators. Don’t worry too much about breaking them or leaving them unattended, it doesn’t matter that much. You don’t need to be certified to ruin America’s democracy."
Here’s the plan: Let’s all of us on Brad Blog apply for these jobs, and throw the machines in the back of our cars, and dump them in the river!!! Sound like a plan??? Why not??? Or drive them over to Bev Harris and have her staff change the votes for what we want!!!
I thought I saw Tom Feeney driving off with one of the machines in the back of his car, with a fake beard on, and a "Kelly Temp Services" shirt on!!! Get him!!!!!!!
At this point Tom Feeney should come clean and admit that Clint Curtis’ affidavit is truthful. After all, it said Feeney asked Curtis to design a vote-rigging prototype to "control Democratic fraud in South Florida."
Well, Democrats haven’t committed any vote fraud in South Florida lately. So Feeney can now claim credit for cleaning up the system.