2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumSalon.com: Ohio Republicans Sneak Risky Software Onto Voting Machines
Good for Salon and Huffington Post for picking this up. Hope they're followed by the major media.
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/
Last week, Bob Fitrakis and Gerry Bello at FreePress.org reported an important story concerning what they described as uncertified experimental software patches being installed at the last minute on electronic vote tabulation systems in 39 Ohio counties.
The story included a copy of the contract [PDF] between Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husteds office and ES&S, the nations largest e-voting system manufacturer, for a new, last-minute piece of software created to the custom specifications of the secretary of state. The contract itself describes the software as High-level enhancements to ES&S election reporting software that extend beyond the current features and functionality of the software to facilitate a custom-developed State Election Results Reporting File.
A subsequent story at The Free Press the following day included text said to be from a November 1 memo sent from the Ohio secretary of states Election Counsel Brandi Laser Seske to a number of state election officials confirming the use of the new, uncertified software on Ohios tabulator systems. The memo claims that its function is to aid in the reporting of results by converting them into a format that can be read by the Secretary of States election night reporting system.
On Friday evening, at Huffington Post, journalist Art Levine followed up with a piece that, among other things, advanced the story by breaking the news that Fitrakis and his attorney Cliff Arnebeck were filing a lawsuit for an immediate injunction against Husted and ES&S to halt the use of secretly installed, unauthorized experimental software in 39 counties tabulators. Levine also reported that Arnebeck had referred the matter to the Cincinnati FBI for criminal investigation of what the Ohio attorney describes as a flagrant violation of the law.
SNIP
ExVAguy
(10 posts)I work with servers and I can say that untested or experimental patches are very unpredictable. Ideally critical systems like voting machines should have their patch level frozen some months before the event date to certify that equipment is stable.
questionseverything
(9,660 posts)As The Free Press notes, "Government reports such as Ohio's Everest study [PDF] [the landmark analysis of the state's electronic voting systems by world class academic and corporate computer science and security experts, commissioned by Husted's Democratic predecessor Sec. of State Jennifer Brunner] document that any single change to the system could corrupt the whole voting process."
pnwmom
(108,995 posts)Good to be here! Thanks!
questionseverything
(9,660 posts)wildeyed
(11,243 posts)created to the custom specifications of Husted. There is no way that this si good or legit.
The reporting system and the counting system are not connected in any actual way. And the results that anybody can get at home on their computer are theyre going to get them at the same time that I do on Election Night. So we have a very transparent system.
Yeah, and as we remember from FL 2000, if you can make it look like your candidate won early, and get people to report it as such, it is sooooo much easier to steal it when there are questions later.
C_U_L8R
(45,021 posts)and if there's hanky-panky, these crooks need to go to jail.
flamingdem
(39,324 posts)It's our only chance - they've done this kind of thing before and gotten away with it
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)Last edited Mon Nov 5, 2012, 04:49 PM - Edit history (1)
Untested patches and fixes have literally cost millions in recoupment man hours.
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