BBV: Ohio Secy' of state issues new report: 57 flaws in machines

In what may be the first evaluation of the voting machines where the government official pulls no punches, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell just released a report on evaluations of the voting machines that is NOT redacted, and reportedly, does not pull any punches as it give the machines poor marks and validates the GEMS hack and other problems. He prints the version numbers. He prints the silly "1111" password.

Diebold says its nothing new and it will correct the flaws.

I cannot find this, but don't have time to look because things are literally popping off right and left right now. It is somewhere on the Ohio state web site. I got this information from a reporter (one of the good ones) who read me portions of the report.

Can anyone help me find it?

By the way, if you go to Google News you'll see there are at least 3 different live stories hitting, and I will break another on the Mike Webb show tonight. They've got me debating a die-hard foe of the BBV movement, Bob Terwilliger, who's going to "explain to the audience what it's like in the real world" (and why touch screens are good).

Bev Harris
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

Did the Diebold CEO promise to deliver Ohio to * in '04?

Well, I would write a letter to the Ohio SOS and remove Diebold from general elections and go paper balloting. Safer, y'know.

Hawkeye-X

Blackwell dumped the SAIC and commissioned his own and if the report I got is accurate, and it sounded like it from what she read, Blackwell gave the machines a failing grade.

This is another groundbreaker. Perhaps not coincidentally -- I had signed up for some sort of notification program when new SEC filings come out on Diebold. Yesterday had two more insiders dumping shares.

Bev

http://www.mikewebb.org/audio.htm

What time Bev?

thanks. You local?

The *best* talk radio host in the area.
trumad gave the link above.

Kick ass Bev!
I'll be cheering you on.
And I'll bet Mike will be too. He's a great guy.

One citizen, one vote.

http://www.enterprisenewspapers.com/archive/2002/9/13/20029139155699.cfm

You can attack him point by point on what is wrong with the touch screen voting based on what he said..

Hawkeye-X

you guys are great!

Bev

...open to the evidence. I hope you turn him into a believer, tonight, Bev.

I'll try to tune in. Good luck!

I doubt will ever believe anything but the swill he spouts. But maybe Bev can smack him upside the head verbally and he will see the light.

Sent me an email saying they were aware of the Diebold problems and were going to be open about it regardless of party affiliation.

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/news/index1.htm

(snip)
“I will not place these voting devices before Ohio’s voters until identified risks are corrected and system security is bolstered,” Blackwell said. “Fortunately, all of the documented risks will be expeditiously corrected by each of our voting machine manufacturers. When Ohioans begin casting ballots on these electronic devices they will do so with the knowledge that the integrity of their voting system has been maintained.”

Compuware Corporation, based in Detroit, conducted a thorough technical analysis of each of the four electronic voting device vendors’ software and hardware. The review included an examination of the computer source code, and scrutiny of the potential for penetration and points of failure specific to each voting machine. Compuware examined the Diebold Election Systems AccuVote-TS, the Election Systems and Software (ES&S) iVotronic, the Hart InterCivic eSlate 3000, and the Sequoia Voting Systems AVC Edge.

In its review, Compuware identified a total of 57 potential security risks within the software and hardware tested. The risks were sorted into high, medium and low categories. Diebold Election Systems had five high potential risk areas, two medium and eight low potential risk areas. ES&S had one high potential risk area, three medium and 13 low potential risk areas. Hart InterCivic had four high potential risk areas, one medium and five low potential risk areas. Sequoia Election Systems had three high potential risk areas, five medium and seven low potential risk areas.

InfoSENTRY, based in Raleigh, NC, conducted on-site vendor inspections and interviews to assess voting system vendors’ security plans, procedures and processes. The review included all information systems security procedures utilized by voting system vendors. InfoSENTRY also assessed Ohio administrative security procedures and made recommendations for improvement.

?Fortunately, all of the documented risks will be expeditiously corrected by each of our voting machine manufacturers."

He's going to challenge all the other Repugs in a primary for Governor. He's already criticizing Taft for raising taxes (GASP!) which means he's a loose cannon in the party.

He flipped when Carter lost in 1980. He isn't an idiot even at that. He knows which way the wind blows, this one isn't good for Ken, so it isn't good.

Pragmatism.

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/2003/09/30/business/6898642.htm

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/news/index.html
(there's couple relating to voting)

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/news/release/12-02-03.htm
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/news/release/09-30-03.htm
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/news/release/09-10-03.htm
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/news/release/09-03-03.htm

and more...

Hawkeye-X

I'd like to know by what right he thinks his views are the "real world" and ours aren't.

That should be an interesting debate. I hope you show him up for a fool. Please post a summary afterwards (for htose of us who wants be able to follow the show) and let us know how it went.

called me today. He was aware of our petition to Blackwell reqesting a waiver on the machines until we could get a verifiable paper ballot. He asked me if I would now accept the machines and I said NO, not without a verifible paper ballot. Hopefully he will be doing a story on this as he said he was looking for "quotes".

Please, all you Ohio Duers.......call the Sec. of states office and tell him you will accept nothing that does not have a verfiable paper ballot. We have legs on this story now.....help with the follow up. I sent copies of our petition out yesterday to all 88 county Boe and today to all 33 Ohio senators.

The word is out.....now please follow up.

Thanks

:kick:

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/hava/index.html

InfoSentry report

for Andy's WA Secretary of State campaign will be printed tomorrow and folded on Thursday. I can run off additional copies beyond what Andy needs if there are folks in this area who would like to distribute them as a part of their own BBV work. It is essentially lysergik's three-panel brochure with the back panel containing some of Andy's campaign info: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVPrimer-trifold.pdf

We'll run a few extra in any case, but if anyone here wants "lots" of them, PM or email me with numbers.

:yourock:

Hundreds of folks across the country and the planet helped bring this issue to people's attention. Hundreds of DUers helped Bev get the book and analysis through beta-testing. Lysergik put together a very concise and clear summary, a designer at work polished up the layout a bit (it's impressive what a few tweaks to the layout can do for readability), the owner is supportive, I'm doing my small bit to help, and others are volunteering to help distribute this brochure, and through your campaign you've made the major contribution of drawing together these disparate efforts to defend the right of the citizen to have a voice.

And a reminder for those who missed it. Bev will be on the Mike Webb Show sometime during the first hour (probably?) with a BBV defender tonight starting at 10:00PM Pacific time (1AM on the east coast). Listen here if you don't get KIRO-710AM radio: http://stream.mikewebb.org:8000/listen.pls

Your words on paper are wonderful. God I wish I had that talent.

I agree with everything you said. Wish I could have written it that way myself.

How do you reconcile the fact that in Maryland, in the SAME version of just the Diebold software, there were "328 security flaws" (at least that's what you previously claimed), while in Ohio there are only a total of fifty-seven flaws (of which only 15 are attributed to Diebold), spread across four different vendors? Did hundreds of flaws just disappear by magic? Were they just overblown or non-existent in the first place? Or did you just misinterpret the original SAIC report?

Enquiring minds want to know.

???

How many security flaws are acceptable to you?

Obviously my answer is 'none'. I'm simply curious what happened to the other oft-claimed 313 alleged security flaws. Something doesn't add up here... does anyone know a forensic accountant?

It really depends on how careful the reviewer is. I am skimming through the technical report right now, and one of the things that they list as 'no risk' to me seems to have a notable potential for security flaws.

In discussing Diebold's machine, they note that they use a certain set of 3rd party libraries to do things like playing sounds and accessing the smart card -- but there is no source code available. What this means, in short, that they don't really have a clue as to what those routines can do. Now, they mention that changes in the routines can introduce security problems in the next section on them, but that's not the only concern. If the programmer who compiled those libraries to the binaries on work machines was corrupt, some backdoors could have been inserted in there. Now, it's conceivable that they have some ultra-careful security procedures that prevent that, which I didn't see because I am skimming, but that's unlikely, in particular since the administrative reviews and code reviews were done by different people. The point I am making, mostly, is that computer security is so hard that the number of potential flaws one sees is mostly proportional to how long one looks -- and although Diebold and many other vendors have created Texas-size security flaws, even a tiny little mistake in logic can be a major disaster.

They claim that the Diebold machine securely protects voters privacy by randomizing the order of transactions. However, when the JHU/Rice group looked at this, they found it to be insecure. They both describe an identical practice. Who is right? Well, it depends by what exactly one means by 'secure', or more precisely, unrecoverable. The idea of the people who wrote the Ohio report is apparently that if it's a major pain in the rear to recover the data, it's secure, while the academic researchers believe that to be considered secure, it must use special cryptographic techniques, which are unbreakable using all currently published knowledge, and which have been carefully studied by world-class experts to make sure they don't have even minutest leaks of information.

How thorough they test the functionality of the machine, if they have access to the source.. the list goes on and on. It all depends on who is brought in to test a machine and how in-depth they get on it. A factor that may bring up a red flag for one company may not for another.

The fact of the matter is that these machines are flawed. Without a voter verifiable paper ballot they are unauditable and not available for recounts.

Diebold Election Systems
5 high potential risk areas
2 medium
8 low potential risk areas

ES&S
1 high potential risk area
3 medium
13 low potential risk areas

Hart InterCivic
4 high potential risk areas
1 medium
5 low potential risk areas

Sequoia Election Systems
3 high potential risk areas
5 medium
7 low potential risk areas

Current online poll:

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/

Yes 98%, No 2%

What possible reason could the average citizen have to oppose a paper trail? Who are those 3% and what could their reasoning be?