Busby/Bilbray Election: 'No Reason to Believe Official Count is Accurate'

Director of Legislative Issues and Policy for VoteTrustUSA calls the Busby/Bilbray election into doubt in his article yesterday, headlined, "Vendor Failures and Lax Security Procedures Call Election Results Into Question In States Across The Country"

…In the most closely-watched election in the nation last week – the special election to fill Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunnigham’s vacant US House seat representing California’s 50th District – volunteer pollworkers were allowed to take Diebold voting machines home as much as two weeks before the election. That’s right – in spite of new "security procedures" issued by Secretary of State Bruce McPherson when he “conditionally” re-certified Diebold’s equipment for use in the state, these machines had “sleepovers” in pollworkers’ garages. Given this egregious violation of chain-of-custody precautions, its no wonder that the accuracy of the election has been called into question.

The fact that the official results are “plausible” in California’s special election is beside the point. In fact, if the corrupted results had been “plausible” in Pottawattamie County, there would have been no scrutiny and losing candidates would have been elected. After a publicly observed hand count of the ballots, voters can be reasonably confident in the results of elections in Pottawattmie County. Without a similar hand count of the California special election, voters have no reason to believe the official results are accurate.

Election officials should be held accountable for the voting technology they have advocated.
…
Having used millions in taxpayer dollars to buy unverifiable, error-prone equipment to count the votes in our elections from their friends at ES&S, Diebold, Sequoia, and Hart Intercivic, the burden is on the election officials to prove that those votes were counted correctly.

http://www.bradblog.com/

it is NOT an issue here. nobody talking about it on party sites, blogs, yahoo groups, etc.

went to a meeting monday nite and it was foregone the election was final, I was the only one who knew the votes were still
being counted. a concession may not be legally binding, but it is psychologically binding.

Msongs
www.msongs.com
batik & digital art
put your pics on a shirt!

And nobody in the California Democratic party, namely Art Torres, gives a damn.

when Shelley was forced from office - not a peep. Torres is a complete waste of space. He does not give money to candidates like Busby. If he perceives the area as rethuglican, no money goes there. We have to get a new Dem chair next year - someone who cares about advancing the party.

You read my mind.

of outrage (here at DU!) over the voting machines being sent home with poll workers (does anyone know if this happens anywhere else in CA?) as well as Bilbray being sworn in early:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2336827

We know without a doubt sending voting machines home with hackers opens opportunities for hacking. Good by Nov 2006 elections if we're not willing to object now.

bradblog.com has been covering it and got an interview with Ed Schulz; got Lou Dobbs to mention it with strong commentary.

Let's keep the information flowing.

Thanks for the post.

the leadership is afraid of what would happen if they did make this a campaign issue in EVERY ELECTION.

That is to say, yes there is a issue and it needs to be addressed before the ELECTIONS.

not AFTER THE ELECTIONS.

This response is not about politics it is about logic.

Q1: Had Busby won would this have even been an issue? I am simply asking the question.

Q2: Do you actually understand the reasons for Sleepovers? It is not an uncommon practice. The logistics involved in the election process are somewhat daunting. San Diego County, as an example has 713 polling stations and it is actually a very large county. Poll workers have to be at the polling station at 6 am to do final checklist and get set up for poll openings at 7.

The machines have to be in place and in operating condition so that means they need to be the machines need to get there by 6 am as well. Logically.

The theme here seems to suggest that one would expect the election board to either drive to 713 polling place simultaneously at 4 am or to have the local supervisor drive to get the machine with an operative of the other political party at 4am.

The problem is that in either scenario there is no room for error. What happens if the car breaks down going to the election HQ or gets stuck in a traffic jam on the way back?

Sleepovers are the best way to insure people get the right to vote. It gives the election board a means to recover from these type of snafus. Is it perfect? No. is it full proof No? but before you attack the system as such give me an alternate method to insure that the polls open on time.

so easily be tampered with (here's a page with links: http://www.voteraction.org/news.html )? Sending voting machines home with poll workers violates the established procedure (by the state of CA) for ensuring chain of custody on these machines as well as election law.
San Diego is the only CA county I've heard is doing this.

The poll workers given the machines in many cases are temporary workers, to help with the election, with a few hours training. They are not full-time workers of the Registrar's office and in fact, if you read the procedures required for using the machines, they do not permit this.
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The ultimate problem, however, is the machines are *NOT* tamper proof. Thus, they shouldn't be being used in any election.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/29/AR2006052900816.html?referrer=emailarticle
<snip>
In California, David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who consults with the state on its elections, said he was "stunned when he found out" about the vulnerability
identified in the Utah test and agreed with the "frequently expressed opinion that this is the worst vulnerability that we have ever seen."

But Diebold spokesman David Bear said it was a "functionality" that company engineers had built into the voting machines so their software could be easily updated, and it only becomes an vulnerability if an unauthorized person gains unfettered access to the machine, and there are safeguards against that happening.

State officials tried to strike a middle ground. "There certainly are potential security vulnerabilities that have arisen," said Jennifer Kerns, a spokeswoman for California's secretary of state. "But you have to be realistic about it: When you're administrating elections, there's a very low risk of any" tampering.
<snip>
==============what about when machines sit in pollworkers homes and garages for days and weeks?

see also http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12vote.html?ei=5090&en=5b3554a76aad524a&ex=1305086400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
The new concerns about Diebold's equipment were discovered by Harri Hursti, a Finnish computer expert who was working at the request of Black Box Voting Inc., a nonprofit group that has been critical of electronic voting in the past. The group issued a report on the findings on Thursday.

Computer scientists who have studied the vulnerability say the flaw might allow someone with brief access to a voting machine and with knowledge of computer code to tamper with the machine's software, and even, potentially, to spread malicious code to other parts of the voting system.

As word of Mr. Hursti's findings spread, Diebold issued a warning to recipients of thousands of its machines, saying that it had found a "theoretical security vulnerability" that "could potentially allow unauthorized software to be loaded onto the system."

The company's letter went on: "The probability for exploiting this vulnerability to install unauthorized software that could affect an election is considered low."

<snip> Aviel Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, did the first in-depth analysis of the security flaws in the source code for Diebold touch-screen machines in 2003. After studying the latest problem, he said: "I almost had a heart attack. The implications of this are pretty astounding."

===============
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This is just one of the many people with concerns about tampering with most of the election machines available in the US
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2950&print=1

After reading your articles on the Busby/Bilbray Election, I am in shock! The security vulnerabilities I know to be associated with the Diebold touch screen voting machine would makes this unimaginable. Utah (and Diebold themselves) accused me that by my allowing Black Box Voting security expert Harri Hursti having access to two machines in Emery County that I had jeopardized the elections for the entire state of Utah. The analysis was all, of course, supervised and video taped to document anything done by Mr. Hursti.

You just don't let these machines go outside established security procedures. Inappropriate access for example; loading on a macro program can happen within minutes and will go undetected on the machine. You can access the machines as I recall even if the front doors are sealed. These security seals, that they talk about as the answer, will probably be taken off by these same poll workers and so who will even notice?

I would worry at every stage of the deployment of the machines even by those who might transport or set them up at polling locations.

I believe that people need to keep the security issues of these machines on the front burner and talk it up with everyone. My worry is that when we as people give up and get tired of the fight, then they have won. Corporate America needs to come clean about the vulnerabilities, clean them up, and let an independent group verify it. If these machines are so great why didn't they use them in the Iraq Elections?

lack of a consitent source of electricity.

I am not saying security should not be everyone's concern. I am simply saying that the lack of a sleep over process would create a huge logistical problem.igu

Figure out how to secure the machines with apprpriate chain of custody until the morning of the election before you turn them on and I will listen.

Just realize that this process is used in every county in the country that has more than one voting place regardless of voting mechanism. It is not something to be shocked about.

Also the strawman argument that because tampering could occur, does not automatically lead to the conclusion that it will. It is my belief that the level of conspiracy necessary to change enough votes in the right precincts to flip an election is so huge that it could not be kept quiet. My challenge to those who believe that this is being done is to show me how it is being done.

Audit trails and checks and balances in the process of tallies from State Election HQs all the way back to the actual machine are such that the manipulation would have to occur at the machine level and would have to be done in such away to overcome known tallies at the state HQ level. Machine talies can not exceed the number of voters in the precinct. That means the only way to rig the results is to flip a vote from candidate A to candidate B. But you have to do it in such away that it occurs prior to precinct certification of the result and in such a way that globablly it tilts the election in the other way. without knowing the resultins from any other precincts. So the only way to doit would be to tamper with all voting machines statewide after the machines have been programmed and locked down. That would take a massive conspiracy and THAT seems highly unlikely.

"Computer scientists who have studied the vulnerability say the flaw might allow someone with brief access to a voting machine and with knowledge of computer code to tamper with the machine's software, and even, potentially, to spread malicious code to other parts of the voting system."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12vote.html?ei=5090&en=5b3554a76aad524a&ex=1305086400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

(see here for info on what a strawman fallacy involves: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html)

we need to ban voting machines.

If people actually wrote in their candidate on a ballot and signed the ballot, or something close to that where it was much harder for them to be tampered with, we'd not only have cleaner elections, we'd have more interactive elections, which, in a place like the US which keeps trying to be a Democracy, that could only be a positive in my opinion.

Our privacy and our rights in almost every realm of our lives, have been stolen from us, sold off and exploited and spied upon without either our knowledge or certainly our permission.

Isn't it amazing how party operatives and some government "authorities" pull the voting privacy importance like a gun whenever we explore other options.

Heck, before the paper ballot, people raised their hands in assembly and town halls!

Thats about as non-private as a voting process gets, and one I favor I should add*

their right to privacy. You have to sign the envelope into which you put your ballot, and print your name and address on the envelope (true in CA and WA).

I personally would prefer the UK system (where ballots are numbered (could be bar coded) and only by court order, if fraud is suspected, can ballots be matched to voters) over a system where someone with a few minutes access to a voting machine can potential skew the results of an entire election (see NY Times article on how malicious code can spread (like a virus) to affect other machines, including tabulators).

Period.

There is no excuse.

I am not saying its great or close to ideal. But short of a single county wide voing place...A football stadium practically I do not see how you get this done.

to have more secure elections *before* electronic voting - even "hanging chads" were less of a threat to entire elections than these machines are.

Please research the problem.

Go back to a more secure form of opti-scan --as far as I know, optiscan machines do not do "sleep-overs" and you can process three or four times as many voters in a given period.

In small precincts, use only paper ballots, no machines.

Don't let anyone sleep with the ballots either.

There were no polling machine 'sleeping overs' in Orange County - All the machines were delivered the day before; all the machines were delivered in a slotted steel pipe cage secured w/ a combination lock & chain and a locked swing open door to access the machines. The polling inspector was given the combination & the key. The night before, as a poll worker, I went to the polling place to assist in setting up the machines, hanging the required posters & information; completing an inventory of forms and all the 'stuff' that is required for an election day. I still had to be there @ 6AM The Registrar of voters is responsible for the machines 2 be delivered not taken home like some bake sale item.

You guys had 5 fire fighting helicopters when we had none (despite OC having gone through bankruptcy not too long ago).

And Orange County manages to get polling machines to polls without sending them home with temporary poll workers. And keep them secure overnight.

Although still, the fact that most machines aren't tamper proof means that all it takes is one corrupt polling inspector who gets access when no one is there, to affect an election. Which is the bigger issue everyone should be concerned about.

We voted in someone's house around the corner. It was bizarre.

No such situation in OC?

once.

MACHINES
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1429264

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