Comments of a FL based professional software engineer regarding HBO's "Hacking Democracy"

Hello Friends:

My name is Douglas De Clue and I live in Orange County Florida where I work
as an automated test equipment (ATE) engineer writing software that performs
data acquisition, hardware control, communications/networking, and hardware
testing.

I have been doing this sort of work since approximately 1996 in a succession
of companies around the country as a contracting engineer.

In many aspects these tasks are very similar to the tasks performed by
automated voting equipment such as that produced by DieBold, ESS, and
others.

I have also worked in the past as a software test engineer where the purpose
was to test the behavior of software against specifications for FDA safety
testing of hemodialysis machines.

I am 40 years old, hold a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering degree from
Georgia Tech since 1989 and have been programming computers since I was 12
years old in 1978 and have been writing software academically since the 1985
and professionally since 1992 when I began working as an engineer.

Since 2004 I have been heavily involved in voter database issues here in
Orange County where I have provided substantial volunteer I/T support to the
Orange County Democratic Party and to a variety of Democratic candidates for
office in the 2004 and 2006 elections including the Kerry campaign, the Rod
Smith campaign for Governor, and several other candidates so I also have a
substantial background in campaigns and voter database issues.

I am currently also a precinct committeeman for the Democratic Party here in
Orange County Florida.

During the 2000 elections, I was not active in the party but I DID reside in
Broward County Florida at the time and became painfully aware of the vote
counting issues of that election. (So called "butterfly ballot" or
Hollerith card voting has obvious verifiability issues as we saw in that
election and we should not return to such Hollerith card systems.)

Because I reside in Orange County, I have had the opportunity to actually
meet Clint Curtis on several occasions (who claims that the GOP once tried
to hire him to write software to hack the vote), who was a candidate who ran
for the United States Congress, 24th Florida Congressional District in this
2006 election almost entirely on the issue of vote verification.

I also met one of the women working with BlackBox who appeared in the
documentary that aired on HBO last night entitled "Hacking Democracy" from
Volusia County this year at a local DFA meeting.

Having said all of this let me now comment on what I observed in last
night's airing of the HBO doumentary "Hacking Democracy":

1) This documentary ironically aired after one of the largest political
landslide elections in recent decades when it was apparent for several
months that the Republican Party in power was headed for imminent and
overwhelming defeat. If votes were going to be stolen, this would have been
the election to do it. The Republicans knew they were going to lose badly
for at least 2 months.

What happened? Did all the vote stealers go on vacation this time?

Why didn't the GOP put the fix in? Even if they did not feel they could
outright steal the entire election, why didn't they pick a few of the closer
races, at least in the Senate, to steal? There were clearly several very
close races in Montana and Virginia after all where if they were going to
steal the election they could have tinkered with these races in very
marginal ways to win them.

Based on this election, I don't believe the vote was actually stolen in 2000
or 2004 using technical hacking means but rather through the Republican
party simply doing a better job of mechanically turning out their base
voters than the Democratic Party in combination with old fashioned voter
suppression through fear tactics (in some instances) like the ever popular
"if you vote you're going to jail" leaflet, campaign dirty tricks in some
instances like phone bank jamming, and through a faulty "felon" purge that
occurred here in 2000 that was heavily weighted to punish Democrats.

In reality, plain old fashioned gerrymandering of election districts has had
the most impact on elections by far here in Florida making most districts
uncompetitive simply by very careful selection of election district lines
using FREDS data and Census Bureau TIGER line data and other demographics
database info to push all minority voters into bizarrely shaped
supermajority districts such as Corrine Brown's here in Central Florida
where she is assured a win ever year because of overwhelming African
American support in her own district while surrounding districts have little
if any African American votes in them causing them to tip to the Republicans
since the African American vote is heavily (90%+) Democratic.

If you want to say "the fix is in", then in reality, it is much more about
the gerrymandering that occurred in the 2000 reapportionment - at least here
in Florida - than about technical vote hacking.

Instead of having 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans therefore in Central Florida
we have 1 Democrat (Corrine Brown) and 3 Republicans (Mica, Feeney, Keller)
in Central Florida through this gerrymandering. If only a small portion of
the African American vote in Corrine Brown's district were redistributed to
the other 3 districts in the area, there would be 2D's and 2R's because the
8th district would then be competitive enough for Democrats to win. The
districts for all levels of races - Congress, State Senate and State House
are all bizarrely gerrymandered in a manner which would make the
partitioning of Berlin and Germany among the four allied powers after World
War II look extremely reasonable by comparison.

2) The documentary "Hacking Democracy" was, in my own opinion, very unfair
in its treatment of the Supervisors of Election in Volusia and Brevard
Counties and treated them as though they were guilty until proven innocent.
I felt this betrayed the purpose in this effort by making the
blackboxvoting.org folks look very biased and not objective in their
conclusions.

3) The Diebold people nonetheless came across to me as doing a song and
dance to protect what appeared to be a product that had multiple technical
deficiencies - especially in the California legislative hearing - rather
than simply admit that there were defects, what those defects were, and how
they planned to correct them. This would have done much to inspire
confidence in their systems that the singing and dancing did not do.

4) I would not describe the simple manipulation of voter database tables
stored on SOE Sanchez' computer system as a "hack".

That really stretches the term "hack".

All that was done was the opening and manipulation of a standard database
file (it appeared to simply be a Microsoft Access .mdb file) using some
simple SQL queries which did the obvious and expected thing - it altered the
stored records. It wasn't really much of an impressive "magic trick" to me
as a programmer.

Not mentioned in the documentary is that every file stored on your computer
has a time and date stamp and a file size and that every NTFS formatted hard
drive has a master file table (MFT) and journal logs that track file changes
on the hard drive. A simple SQL record change as demonstrated in the video
would be fairly easy to detect using common forensic techniques so I would
not be willing to describe the vote change demonstrated on SOE Sanchez'
computer using the SQL query as "untraceable".

The real issue that was not addressed by BlackBoxVoting.org here was the
fact that they were storing voter information in aggregate form as the
official election record in the first place.

5) Regarding the change performed to the database file at the SOE office, I
would like to recommend the following safeguards be implemented by SOEs to
minimize the risk of hacking in the future:

a) After an election, individual voting machine datacards should be
immediately backed up to a write once media like CD-ROM or DVD-ROM as they
are uploaded so that a permanent record exists that cannot later be easily
altered or better yet replaced entirely by write once media like DVD-ROM or
CD-ROM so that they can not be altered after the fact. Such write once
media must be treated like evidence in a criminal case with a chain of
custody, seals, and secure storage.

b) Voter data should NOT be stored in relational databases as simple
aggregate totals. This makes it too easy to alter the results en masse. It
should only be presented that way for final viewing on the SOE website.

c) Instead, voter data should be stored in a journal or transaction log
format where each individual vote is individually recorded into a file along
with other corroborating information like:

i) Software Version ID and an MD5 (CRC32) checksum for that software.
ii) Voting machine serial#
iii) Voting data card serial#
iv) SOE Operator#
v) A globally uniqued voter sequence (GUID) for that particular machine
generated by a remote SOE machine that provides this to all voting machines.
It in turn would keep track of which machines it issued voter sequence
numbers to and when so as to make it hard to fake without access to both
machines.)
vi) Time and date stamp.
vii) Vote totals for each race for the machine as well as how the voter
voted in each race.
viii) A CRC32 (cyclic redundancy check) number computed for each
transaction. This is a complex checksum algorithm that would make it very
difficult if not impossible for a "hacker" to go back after the fact and
alter the records and is the basis for file verification when downloading
software and also in many common anti-virus programs.

You could also add the actual voter ID number from the SOE rolls to this
list of items to insure additional security but then it would be possible to
determine how people voted.

Tracking the operation of each machine like this in a transaction log format
rather than in simple relational database tables with aggregate counts would
make it much much harder to fake the results because the votes would then
have to be faked one by one rather than en masse as demonstrated in the
video. It would be very hard to fake the votes in a convincing manner that
could not be discovered by poll watchers who keep track of when people come
and go and how many show up at the polls at a given time.

6) This transaction log, any databases, the hard drives, the datacards and
the operating systems must be:

i) Password protected
ii) Encrypted
iii) Protected by physical security and chain of custody must be insured.
iv) Norton "Ghost" imaged or otherwise forensically copied to a permanent
write once media for preservation before and after the election.

It seems like all of these very obvious security techniques were being
ignored or by-passed in the Sanchez' demo and I hope that they are actually
being practiced in the real world.

7) All machines for voting must NOT have internet access and must be placed
on private networks with no outside access. This will do much to eliminate
the threat of external hacking - however, most hacking still occurs from the
inside in the real world.

8) Instead of storing the vote totals on each voting machine on the flash
memory cards that Diebold is using, I would say that the votes need to be
recorded on a write once media like CD-ROM or DVD-ROM so that they can not
be altered after the vote. This would also make it much easier to prevent
malicious code execution from the cards or changing the contents of the
cards by someone with a card reader as their security expert did.

9) The constant and ominous reference in the documentary to negative ballots
and counting backwards was not properly explained in the documentary and has
a simple more innocent explanation that I wish to comment upon here:

a) The counting backwards would most likely occur at 32767 votes because
numbers are probably being represented in the computer program as 16 bit
signed integers which means that because of how math is performed by
computers that after 32767, additional votes added would "roll over" the
count and cause it to start counting backwards. (For the non techie people
out there, think of this as being like your car odometer rolling over at
99,999 miles.)

b) Variables in voting machine software should never be declared as "short"
which means signed 16 bit integers. Instead they should be declared as
"unsigned long" which means unsigned 32 bit integers or in other words that
negative numbers would not be possible and that the count would go between 0
and 4,294,967,295 or slightly over 4 billion. This exceeds the entire
population of the United States by a factor of 14 (whereas 32767 is small
enough to actually occur in real races) and would prevent the roll over
scenario from ever occurring and it would also prevent malicious persons
from preloading the vote counts with negative numbers as demonstrated in the
video by BBV's security expert.

This problem is almost certainly not really malicious on the part of
Diebold, ESS, or other vendors but rather a simple coding oversight by the
programmers of the software who did not consider the unintended consequences
of choosing signed variables or short (16 bit variables) with respect to the
roll over issue and the possibility of pre-biasing the votes on the cards.

10) I definitely agree with BBV that the touchscreen devices are too easily
subject to either malicious code and simple miscalibration of the screens
because no permanent paper ballot record exists that can be hand counted and
such systems must be discontinued and removed from operation ASAP.

Paper ballots involving having the voter manually connect the arrow as used
here in Orange County FL or fill in the circle such as SOE Sanchez' office
uses however CAN be hand counted and thus are manually verifiable and
provide an important check on software programming errors and potential
malicious human behavior.

11) When the government buys custom software for DOD, FAA, NASA, FDA, or
other government agencies such as voting software obviously is, the software
is not "open source" to the general public - however, the government as the
customer is always given the source code for maintenance, inspection and
test purposes as well as compiling instructions to allow the gov't to verify
that the delivered compiled code is actually the same as the source code
provided, along with MD5/CRC32 checksums to verify the compiled code, design
documentation and specifications for testing.

12) Truly black box software without source code should never be allowed in
voting since it is almost impossible to tell what the software does by
testing to specifications alone.

Specifications testing hardly ever provide a complete check of the
functionality of any complex piece of code and should be viewed as a mere
starting point in software quality, not an end.

Because they apparently did not understand this simple fact about software
testing, I believe that the BBV people treated the CIBER people in
Huntsville Alabama rather unfairly in their "ambush" interview. The CIBER
people were simply given a check list of test specifications by the
purchasing gov'ts which likely as not wasn't complete due to a lack of
technical sophistication on the part of the purchasing SOEs and a lack of
insight into the development process of the vendors.

The CIBER people simply ran the check list they were given and had no way to
test the software beyond that without having design documentation and source
code which they were likely not given by the vendor. They did the job they
were contracted to do, nothing more, nothing less and it really wasn't fair
to bash them for not having access to information that the vendor did not
provide to them.

The software is, after all, tested "to specifications" and not "to
perfection" which is of course much harder to define. Those
specifications, like it or not, are almost always incomplete or faulty in
some manner in any event.

13) Beyond specification testing, an actual source code inspection and
analysis by a number of different experts is also a required (although not
necessarily sufficient) condition of software quality assurance.

In the end there is never any total assurance that software is entirely bug
free and we have seen a number of spectacular examples of software quality
failures in recent years including cases like the Mars probe that cratered
in a few years ago due to inconsistent engineering units in the software, a
lost earth orbiting satellite due to an incorrect constant for the
rotational velocity of the earth, a radiation device for treating cancer
that delivered lethal radiation doses and others where extensive testing
failed to reveal unintentional flaws in the software prior to operational
use.

Such mission-critical or safety of "life and limb" type software (sometimes
jokingly referred to as controlling "elevators", "nuclear power plants",
"airliners", and "iron lungs") is notoriously difficult to make bug free and
I have personally been involved in writing and testing such software for
wind tunnel systems where control of a 5,000 kW (6700 horsepower) electric
motor was involved. It is no joke if you lose control of a 5,000 kW motor -
people can be killed and millions of dollars of damage can occur - so it
takes a great deal of effort to get it right.

Yet, nevertheless, we continue to have spectacular failures of
mission-critical software in a variety of areas. (See:
http://awads.net/wp/2005/12/05/ten-worst-software-bugs/ or
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/bugs/0,69355-0.html?tw=wn_story_page_pr
ev2)

Ultimately, typically only about 1/3rd of bugs can be discovered through
specification testing, another third or perhaps somewhat more may be easily
found through cursory code inspection, but the remaining 1/3rd ends up being
discoverd through end user operation in the field. This is why it is
important to implement extensive beta testing by a variety of users before
software is generally released for normal operations.

14) Wherever software is used by the government for any purpose that will
affect our lives such as voting or as evidence in a court trial (say in the
case of DUI intoximeters or radar guns) such software must be made exempt at
least some of the protections of copyright and patent laws so that it can be
inspected by the government, recognized experts, and the public at large to
insure confidence in the system.

In criminal evidence cases, such black box devices as intoximeters and radar
guns deny the accused the right to confront the evidence against them -
essentially it becomes guilt by "magic 8-ball". In voting it then becomes
election by "magic 8-ball".

Such "open sourcing" of voter and other gov't owned systems like
intoximeters and radar guns would also make it much easier to identify and
fix flaws in the system because far more sets of eyes would be looking for
the problems and it would not be possible to keep such problems hidden for
long.

15) Voting systems based any of the Microsoft Windows operating systems are
particularly vulnerable as we have already seen from the many many monthly
security patches issued over the past 5 years+. All commercial operating
systems are vulnerable to some degree or another (see the NSA white paper:
http://www.jya.com/paperF1.htm) and for this reason it is necessary to
always hand count a 3% random sample of paper ballots in each election to
insure system integrity and if discrepancies are found to recount larger
samples up to and including a full manual recount if necessary.


My final conclusions regarding the HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy"

a) Technical vote hacking most likely did NOT occur in the 2000, 2002, 2004,
or 2006 elections.
b) Vote hacking is however theoretically possible to some degree depending
upon the software and hardware being used by the SOE and the technical
sophistication of the SOE personnel using it.
c) Voting software must be made open source.
d) Paper "opti-scan" ballots appear to be the best solution to providing
election traceability because they can also be hand counted.
e) There are numerous actions that I have outlined that can be taken to
significantly harden the voting software against hacking.
f) No software is "hack proof" or "bug free" however and a 3% sample hand
count should always be performed as a safety check.
g) The following voting issues which are more seriosu than vote hacking need
to be addressed expeditiously:

i) Gerrymandering. Blatant district gerrymandering using FREDS, US Census
Bureau TIGER line data, and other demographic resources must be stopped and
districts need to make organic sense following geographic boundaries like
rivers, highways, city limits, etc. so that communities of interest are
preserved and so that districts are not biased by racial or economic factors
to prevent competitive races.
ii) "Felon" and other types of "purges" whereby voters are removed from the
ballot and either denied a vote or forced to vote provisionally when these
purges are often subject to cases of mistaken identity given the issue of
common names.
iii) Intentional voter suppression "dirty tricks" like the "if you vote
you're going to jail" leaflet that appears in election after election in
African American and Hispanic communities.
iv) Dirty tricks like campaign phone bank jamming, false messages using
robodialer systems, and other such tactics.

h) Legislation at the state and Federal level needs to be passed to insure
that the fixes I have recommended here and other fixes that other experts
recommend are implemented promptly to minimize the risk of a hack in future
elections.

Respectfully,
Douglas J. De Clue
Orlando, FL
ddeclue2@earthlink.net

I've been expecting this.

How could there be stealing? The Dems won this time?

Bullcrap.

Once does not a trend show.

Paper ballots, hand counted, with an audit trail... What's wrong with that?
Too troglodyteish?

I DID CALL for paper ballots and I DID CALL for an audit trail...

I love being bashed by people don't even bother read what I write.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

You lost me with this...

can you do that?

Be specific...what specifically do you not understand? I don't have the time to waste since all 100 of you want to gang up on me at one time...

Doug D.

i'd like you to answer that question. it's an easy one.

...I didn't read all of it? Because I'm busy too and I'm also a software professional.

Your screed should be 1/3 the length it is. And there are certain points you make that pretty much stopped me from reading.

The exit polls for VA and WY did not match the results although every other senate race did. Fact is, they DID try to steal it (to maintain control of the Senate) but they miscalculated and didn't steal quite enough votes.

As for the technical issues, call it "hack" or whatever you want, you are using a strawman semantic argument. The machines are easy to manipulate, that is all there is to it.

I was never worried that they would steal 150 races, that is not possible logistically. They did exactly what they've done in 2000 and 2004, they figure out where the lynch pin is and go after it.

as we read.... 7% differentiation from the exit polls to the votecount all over the country? guess what. that indicates fraud.

It doesn't PROVE fraud.

Sorry but samples are just samples.

Doug D.

You want everyone to accept your conclusions because you're an expert. Yet, you describe no such expertise in statistical methods and just dismiss the polls because "samples are just samples".

While i'm impressed with your thoroughness, if you have reached a conclusion that there was NO vote fraud based upon electronic voting because "samples are just samples", then you've lost me entirely.

For all your experience and expertise in your field, i'll bet i've got more & more in mine, and the understanding & application of statistical techniques to a myriad of complex systems is my field.

When you get past "Samples are just samples", get back to me. That would indicate that you're off your high horse and are willing to admit that you could be wrong, since your conclusions are inhibited by a gap in your knowledge.
The Professor

I am in the TEST engineering business and have an engineering degree which REQUIRED that I learn all about student's T, gaussian distributions, deviations (sigma) etc.

Sorry but I'm NOT wrong here.

You can't prove in an exit poll that:

a) The sample taken is random or that a gaussian distribution curve applies.
b) That the persons you polled didn't lie to you.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

I can't speak for statistics authoritatively, but you can't escape the conclusion in FLorida 13 that the problem was not the voters but the machines which caused the HUGE undervote rate of 13% in the house race. And I don't care if the reason was "use error" on the part of the voters- the bottom line is that the Republicans make it harder to vote if you are a Democrat- they have established a "set-your-watch-by-it" reliable history of doing so. The 2000 "felon" purge was just one good example. The undervote in Sarasota now being the most recent one. The fact that the largest undervote rate of 25 to 30% occurred in communities of older retirees is evidence that the machines discriminate against older folks who are not as proficient with computers, and have a much longer learning curve in getting acclimated to them.

Herewith I offer my arguements which can be made to invalidate the vote in Florida 13:

I think it is clear from the outrageously high percentage of undervotes that it was NOT voter choice to skip the race, and that for many reasons fault lies with the machines.

There are numerous eyewitness accounts testifying to the fact that the machine did not record voter intent to cast a vote for this race.

There are numerous eyewitness accounts testifying to the fact that confirmation of a non-vote could easily have been missed.

There are numerous accounts testifying to the fact that the race was not displayed prominently and could easily have been missed altogether. This was especially true amongst older voters not used to the machines and using them for the first time.
The fact that the undervote occurred most overwhelmingly in senior communites (one had a rate of 30%) is evidence that the machines are discriminatory towards older voters, and represent a form of disenfranchisment.

If I were a lawyer I would file a suit invalidating the vote based on unequal protection.

Which is causing the obvious problems.

As I stated TOUCHSCREEN must go. There is no argument there. I am for opti-scan paper ballots that can be hand counted.


Doug D.

Optiscan counting is (marginally) better than vapor ballots.

but I did say as much in my original post...

Thanks,

Doug De Clue

Gaussian distributions have nothing to do with sampling curves for social statistics polling. Hence, you are out of your league here.
The Professor

That is why the standard deviance rules about 1 (68%),2 (95%),3 (99%) sigma just don't apply like people think they do because the distribution curve IS NOT Gaussian.

Nice try though..

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

Your numbers are meaningless.

First, in a normal distribution, 3 sigma isn't 99% of the obeserable data. So, you got that wrong.

You do know that no matter the distribution, no matter the skewness or kurtosis, that 3 sigma on each side of the mean ALWAYS incorporates at least 98.71% of all observations. Right? Apparently you don't know that either. That's two you got wrong.

Lastly, you should be aware, if you knew a tenth of what you think you know, that the standard deviation is a FUNCTION OF THE DISTRIBUTION! So, you got that wrong too! That's strike three

You are utterly clueless. And you proved it all in this last post.

You should cut your losses. You're in WAY over your head.

The Professor

On edite: Standard "deviance". You don't even know the word is DEVIATION! That's strike 4 and 5!

3 sigma is 99.5%
2 sigma is 95.4%
1 sigma is 68%

Duh standard devation is a function of the distribution, I guess I sat through 6 quarters of calculus and 9 more graduate hours of engineering mathematics for nothing according to you "professor"... What exactly are you a "professor" of anyways?

Most people assume that GAUSSIAN distributions always apply and make incorrect assumptions as to the distribution of 1,2,3 sigma, along the X axis, i.e. that they are equidistantly spaced when that is not always true.

I know how to integrate under the curve too Sherlock..

Don't waste your time trying to argue statistic with me..

You are the one way over your head.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

You still don't know the proportions of the sigma bounds. You still got that wrong, and clearly you think you know it. You are so clueless.

First off, you didn't know that sigma is a function of the distribution, not the other way around. If you did, you wouldn't have brought up the distributions in the first place in some feeble attempt to pretend you understood this stuff. So, you made that up.

"Most people assume that GAUSSIAN distributions always apply and make incorrect assumptions as to the distribution of 1,2,3 sigma, along the X axis, i.e. that they are equidistantly spaced when that is not always true." Who was talking about "most people"? I was talking about YOU not knowing what you thought you knew. And i proved it. I warned you that you were in over your head. You just couldn't take the warning.

You are still stuck on Gaussian distribution and social science polls are not based upon normal distributions in the first place. So, you are clueless about that too. You wouldn't have brought it up, TWICE, if you knew anything about that.

To move on: Integrating curves has nothing to do with statistical analysis. That is a rudimentary (yes, i said rudimentary) theoretical underpinning of WHY statistics work, but has nothing to do with HOW they are employed. Any second semester calc student can integrate a curve. If they can't they flunk out. You sure you really made it through 6 semesters. I find that hard to envision.

I have been teaching statistical theory for longer (likely) than you've been an adult. And given your petulance, i'll take that as high probability of truth.

Yes, it would appear that you took those classes for nothing. Other than, of course, trying to browbeat people with more education than you. And, since i've taught more different types of graduate classes than you took in your whole college career, i'm not intimidated. So, you took them for nothing.

The word is STATISTICS, not "arguing statistic". The field is the plural. Now, perhaps it's time for you to quit pretending to be something you're not. You are completely wrong. You have made SEVERAL errors from a mathematical and statistical theory perspective. I've made none, and if you take the time to look it up, you'll find that things i know in my sleep are beyond your scope. If they weren't you would not have made the fundamental errors you made in your posts.

You're so off base on everything you've said that you continue to reinforce my negative opinion with each new post. You're a kid with a chip on the shoulder, limited knowledge and a belief that you know it all. You're wrong.
The Professor

It's the ratio of the area under the curve at a given sigma vs. the total area under the curve that we are talking about and hence integrating the area under the curve IS EVERYTHING "Professor" when we talk about 68% or 95.4% etc.

You really don't impress me much either..."Professor" (of what you've never said...)

It's time for YOU to stop pretending that YOU know everything when you don't.

Finally You get into complaining about typo errors here which is just lame..

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

Time for me to go home and take a shower. No, wait, the drain is still clogged. Damn.

It's really hard to take on the entire D/U universe almost single handedly like this.

People want to attack me like the scum of the earth merely for challenging the conventional DU wisdom even though I'm every bit as much a Democrat as they are.

What can you do?

Doug D.

It's that the people who are invested in defending it are much more passionate than the people who aren't. Also, they set such a... tone that even when some people on the thread are attempting nuance, one would never know.

I guess you take your lumps and pick your fights. There were a few things you could have done to make the OP less liable to being misinterpreted, but I won't try to kid us: it would've been misinterpreted regardless.

All in all, great OP. And as for exit polls, oh man, don't get me started. ;)

You just won't learn will you.

The entire premise of the OP is that data exists that the machines weren't used to attempt vote fraud. That may or may not be true. However, i suggest that your knowledge in the interpretation of data is suspect, and far below what you believe it to be.

You're still wrong about the integration of curves. Because it has nothing to do with MY point or YOUR point. My point is that you don't know how to interpret statistics, which is the raison d'etre of statistical methodology. Without interpretation, they're just numbers. Your interpretation skills are suspect. Integration of the area under the curve has NOTHING to do with anything related to the conclusions you've drawn. You're just using that as a bludgeon to avoid addressing your weak statistical skills.

As to your question of what i teach: I am under no obligation to answer your silly little questions. You won't answer mine, so quid pro quo. However, there are DOZENS of DU'ers who know me personally. Check around. You'll find that i'm not pretending to be anything other than i am. I've been here a long time and folks know me, up close and personally.

But, since i'm obviously the adult in this discussion: I have advanced degrees in Quantum Chemistry, Statistical Mechanics & Economics. I have taught grad classes in all three fields. And, i've been doing so since the late 70's. Don't question my credentials again. They FAR exceed yours.

You really need to learn how to accept correction. You think the typos are the issue? How convenient! I pointed out a half-dozen theoretical errors in your descriptions of your expertise in statistics. You have not pointed out errors on my part, because you can't. So, i'm guilty of piling on, with the misspellings too! Boo hoo! Seriously. I think you need some help. You're grossly self-absorbed.

As to the other poster who didn't like this subthread: Tough! I call them as i see them. I see a pompous twit spouting off about things to which they have been marginally exposed and then being insulted when anyone calls them on it.

Don't bother replying. You are tedious and boring and i will not bother with you again.
The Professor

I have the education, training, experience, professional publications, national/international standards, business experience. etc. to more than match yours -- over forty years worth. While I understand your analysis, I find it rather naive and missing both the big picture and much of the details.

First, you have no basis for stating whether there were attempts to hack the 2006 election, much less the 2000, 2002, or 2004 ones. The counter argument that the anti-Repub turnout swamped most of the efforts at hacking seems more likely to most who are looking at the bigger picture. That would be consistent with the fact that on election night, Rove was still telling people in the WH that they were still going to retain control.

Second, you get too caught up in trying to find a technical solution by making various tweaks to the system. Sometimes, being a Luddite is a better solution.

I agree with you that the movie intermingles the 2000 integer-overflow issue (discussed repeatedly here and elsewhere) with the ability to "pre-load" votes on the memory cards without detection (positive and negative counts). (Since there are actually programs on the memory cards you can do a lot of other mischief.) I realized that this was not critical to the movies narrative nor to its main thrust with the hijack of the memory card on the scanned ballots; explaining this would have taken forever with a non-technical audience.

I also agree with a number of your common-sense items, but most of these are a minimum concensus and according to the Brennan Center report, they really don't do much to reduce the threat.

While you are suspicious and somewhat cynical, you need to be a lot more so. I have spent my life building mission critical systems, fighting off all grades of security threats, and I am continually amazed at what I see in the wild on both commercial and hardened systems.

BTW nothing that anyone has proposed addresses the many lower level attack vectors. For example, how do you prevent pre-infection of hardware components -- maybe during manufacturing somewhere in Asia -- that only activates when it is installed in certain environments (e.g. disk drive, video board, scanner). While you may not have heard much about these risks, they do exist and are very hard to detect.

Sure any system can be corrupted... even paper and pencil.. ask Mayor Daley of Chicago...

I understand that there are always threats.. clearly I do but to say that a totally manual system is any better is totally without proof.

You are trading the devil you know for the devil you think you know.

My basis regarding hijacking, re:the 2006 election is simpler than the alternative that they hijacked 2000,2002, and 2004 but left 2006 alone... Why change now if you've got a good thing that's working for you?

Doug D.

And that's one helluva big statement you just made about respondents lying to you. Where did that come from?

People often tell you what they think you want to hear - not what they actually believe.

That's why so many girls fall for "the sensitive guy" rather than the good looking guy?

They tell the pollster they want a sensitive guy but the reality is they'd rather have the good looking guy and hope he turns out to be sensitive later on.

Doug D.

and you should know that!

I'd gather from your posts you have young, naive women SWARMING you!

Unlike software, I don't claim to know much about women...

Are you really surprised?

:-)

Doug D.

;)

Make the most of what you've got!

;-) or is it that I'm now a middle aged difficult snarky know-it all now that I've turned 40?

Doug D.

S'pose now you'll refute that.

:rofl:

It seems antecdotally at least to be true of late... I hope you're right..

:-)

Doug D.

Do you call yourself a Democrat? Don't you think a lot of people call themselves Republican?

If the surveyors are professional, there shouldn't be any bias on which to base the idea of "what they want to hear" - it should be a neutral experience. That's basic survey design. so the idea that people were lying en masse to exit pollsters after 2004 is not realistic. Was there some conspiracy by the Repubs to lie on the exit polls? That's about as believeable.

and I know that there is a difference between what they say and what they believe and the art is in coaxing out the truth.

It doesn't always work so well and polls clearly can be wrong.

I'm not saying there was a conspiracy to lie, just that individual human nature allows for the possibility and also that you can't guarantee yourself a "neutral" sample in the real world, you can only make your best guess as to what a "neutral" sample actually is and try to get it.

Doug D.

No, the point is that the experience should be neutral, i.e. any biases present in the interviewer should be kept to a minimum. A professional polling company should be able to do that, or else they won't remain professional for long. Any polling company that goes into it with the idea that they will "coax out" the truth is not a very professional company - that's just an excuse for them to put their own spin on it. There will be lies, yes, but for massive errors in exit polling like what we are told happened in 2004 implies a concerted effort, which is why it is that so many people don't believe the results were what was reported. It is presumptive to suggest that exit polling is a poor method of determining the results, like you did in this post and previous posts. Until 2004, exit polling was considered the strongest statistical tool available for election evaluations. It was strong enough in fact that we belittled other countries' elections based on their divergence from their exit polls. Now you claim that exit polling has little validity and is subject to the whims of voters not telling the truth...what do you base this on? Why do you believe that? Why do you think that suddenly exit polls are now worthless, while the unverified voting results from 2004 are perfectly fine, even though you condemn those same voting machines for not being verifiable?

The point you are missing throughout this thread is that last Tuesday may have easily been a case of rigged machines still - they just got overwhelmed. If the machines are rigged, then they may (and since we don't know what the programming is, we can't tell at all) be programmed to take every 10th vote, for example, and give it to the Republicans. In a close race this would guarantee a victory. In an overwhelming turnout for one party though, the other party would still lose. So, it has nothing to do with exit poll analysis to claim that the machines are not rigged based on last Tuesday. You don't have enough information to make that claim.

fraud occurred.

Your basis for making that claim is completely spurious. It seems to be entirely based on the your untenable assumption that any such fraud would be completely unabashed in the face of widely differing final poll and election poll results, 100% effective and perfectly related to the global national election outcome of 2006.

thers always some way to keep the argument going on forever because the conspiracy theorist insists on absolute unobtainable levels of proof and fails to grasp existentialism... how do I prove that you are all not just a figment of my imagination.

I settle for reasonable common sense "reasonable doubt" standard we use in trials, not absolute proof.

If you want to waste your time be my guest.

If a court ever decides your way about 2000, 2002, or 2004 elections, please let me know. I await their verdict.

Doug D.

If you wish to jump to conclusions using spurious reasoning be my guest.

didn't claim to be one either..

to the rescue. As always.
:yourock:

You cannot prove fraud, therefor it didn't happen. We have conclusively proven that fraud CAN occur. Statistics from exit polls show that it PROBABLY (not possibly, as you say) occurred. I tend to believe the numbers of statiticians who show over and over that fraud PROBABLY DID occur. As a matter of fact, I think that fruad is oozing out all voer this election, and 2000 and 2002 and 2004. Why, pray tell, will the press NOT RELEASE the exit poll raw data from 2004? Why will Alaska not release the dat afrom 2004 to the democratic party? Why do the exit polls not match the vote counts during teh apst 6 years, to a tune of 7%, when they have alwasy been within a margin of error. always. until now. Why does the entire world use exit polls as a measure of fraud, if it is so very unreliable? And why does Zogby have an error rate of plus or minus one percent, if exit polls are so unreliable?
I don't think so. I think you are quite mistaken.

You can't make a legal case (and that's why Kerry didn't) that statistical samples equal actual proof. Of course you can Why not? until the cows come home but you will never win this argument before a judge.

Doug D.

the green party. The evidence is all there. Kerry "couldn't make a case" is nonsense.

And they never will...

Doug D.

This argument makes me feel so alert!

Imagine if all you needed was "statistical correlation" to send people to jail.. DNA and fingerprint evidence are pretty scary in this regard already.

George Bush would love it if the burden of proof were mere "statistical correlation" or even a "preponderance of the evidence" rather than "reasonable doubt".

How many people is he holding Guantanamo right now on far less that "reasonable doubt"?

Doug D.

doesn't prove they weren't /aren't all over the place.

Weird.

Seriously. What? Did you even consider the possibility that election fraud could be regional rather than global in nature?

and I respect the fact that it looks like you have really put a lot of thought into all of this. I think we all have to look at what we know and decide what we think. The only thing I have ever agreed with * on is these exit polls. If * thinks they are irregular and prove fraud, then I must side with him. God help me, I can not believe I am agreeing with * but since he believes they were fixed, I will go with that.

OK, by now you are thinking he did not come out and say. You are kind of right but so am I. Let me bring you back to the Ukraine elections. Just Google them and * and then see how he claimed that those elections were NOT legitimate BECAUSE OF EXIT POLLS. He did not even leave any leeway for squirming around. He demanded they must redo the vote. Those polls had a smaller percentage discrepancy than our polls did! Ergo, I can only conclude that if * says the Ukraine elections were phony and that another election is in order, he must also honestly claim the same thing for our elections.

So, for once I will go with our pResident and state that according to his statements our elections were stolen. Thank you, Mr.pResident. If that percentage is good enough to prove a stolen election (and demand a new one) to you, it is good enough for me.

I go with * and state the polls prove the election was stolen. Are you going against * and do you believe the Ukraine election was on the up and up?

And that they didn' PROVE fraud in Ukraine either but merely suggested fraud.

Proving is different than suggesting.

Doug D.

can not be sure of that.

What we can be sure of is that around the world there is a reason for exit polls and that well established reason is to give a hint that there may be something amiss (when there is only a small percentage of disparity)or something being stolen (with a big enough discrepancy).

We can not work on what we believe he may have meant by what he said. We can only work with what he said. We can only work with why the rest of the world uses polls. I am trying not to come across as unfriendly here because I know you have gotten your fair share in this thread - please know that any sarcasm that comes across is really that I am so very upset at this administration. I want to come off as respectful as you have in your answer so please just stay with me because this issue makes me want to scream and has for quite some while. Any seething anger you sense is NOT meant for you.

Now that I have that part out of my system: We have used polls because in all of our history (us being the world, not necessarily the US) it has been the canary in the coal mine so to speak. There is generally a margin of error anyone looks for in any election to see if they are flashing danger signs.

The * cabal was so convinced that there was fraud that * sent forth Colin Powell who said:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-11-26-bush-ukraine_x.htm

<snip>
Powell spoke shortly after election officials in Kiev announced that the Russian-backed prime minister, Victor Yanukovych, had defeated a former prime minister, Viktor Yushchenko, in Sunday's election.

"We cannot accept this result as legitimate because it does not meet international standards and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse," Powell said in a statement read to reporters.

He called for a full review of the conduct of the election and the tabulation of election results.
<snip>

This is much more than just posturing for the camera. This was what Colin said in relation to that election as well as to back up his boss. If they said that about the Ukraine than I say that that standard needs to be applied to all of the world and that we need to have a full review of the exact same things. As you can see, in Colin's comments, there is not much room for maneuver on whether there had been fraud or not.

Even if some believe * did not mean what he said (ie. he said it because it was convenient) we still can not ignore that this is the standard the rest of the world has been using and that up until now it has worked pretty well.

I still have to go with * and Colin and state (while substituting the word 'USA' for Ukraine) and say that everything is suspect and must be investigated.

The 2006 election proves nothing about the 2000 election or the 2004 election.

All that expertise and he resorts to talking points right out of the gate.

Did you even read what I wrote? It doesn't sound like you did to me.

Doug D.

in 2000. That's logical?

Rushbo could come up with that all by himself, zero expertise. He probably has.

Who's going to bother to read the rest when you start right out at the gate with a right wing talking point?

It makes a lot of sense to me given how desperate the GOP and George Bush have been lately to hold onto power. Now they are open to investigation and eventually to impeachment and Bush is basically over as President. :-)

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

I honestly think they were arrogant enough to think they could rely on the last few elections to pull them through. The people thought differently

Karl Rove was arrogant according to the latest Time piece about the election.

The Republican Congress was clearly desparate based on my experience in the elections here in Florida.

Doug D.

"Hacking Democracy" aired the week & weekend before the election. Several times.

Your points are valid and useful BUT FOR the "evidence" that supports your opinion that hacking was unlikely in '00 & 04, which is, pardon me, horseshit.

Thank you for your otherwise spot-on analysis.

Thanks...sort of...

Nobody has given a plausible answer to why, if the Republicans could steal the vote at will that they didn't do so this time.

Doug D.

The little people -- the folks who are asked to do the dirty work--programmers, tech assistants, Election Judges, voting-machinedidn't co. employees, etc. WISED UP to the coming Dem tidal wave and elected not to risk being caught and prosecuted.

If the software is already written and in place?

Shouldn't Karl Rove simply be able to flip open his lap top and hack the vote?

Conspiracies never work because as Ben Franklin once said two can keep a secret if one is dead.

If this is a "vast right wing conspiracy" involving dozens or hundreds of people as you suggest then there is simply no way it would be kept quiet for 6 years.

Doug D.

I saw far more than you apparently did..

Doug D.

when they came up the wrong way this time (despite all their GOTV efforts) how could they claim it was the machine's fault? Especially in the face of months of lousy polls on the Pukkes and the Pretzel. They'll save it for next time.

and please don't confuse willful ignorance with "Logic"

the horseshit part.

Yes.

an incorrect assumption on your part.

I saw it when I had time to watch it which was last night.

Everybody here, it seems has a chip on their shoulder because I happened to challenge DU's conventional wisdom on this topic except, apparently for other computer types like me who agreed with me and Will Pitt who has the good sense to keep an open mind.

FYI, eWeek, an I/T industry mag, very much liked my piece and will like publish it or some version of it very soon.

Sorry if you don't like it...

Doug D.

and WHAT is with your NASTY OBNOXIOUS attitude in this entire thread..

It doesn't really matter when it ran given that now that we've had the election, it STILL debunks the whole notion of a giant right-wing vote stealing conspiracy.

Give it a rest will ya'

Doug D.

RESPECT MAH AUTHORITIE! I AM YER WAR PREZZYDENT!




.

We agree on something..

Doug D.

Do your own, here: http://www.sp-studio.de/

Enjoy!

perhaps there were two playing the game this time? when numbers of votes ie: blocks of hundreds or thousands jump back and forth from one party's candidate to the other party's candidate during the counting...isn't it possible that one switched the votes...and someone was waiting for it to happen...then switched it back to the candidate the votes were taken from...? maybe even a couple times over until the party initializing the vote theft, realized that the other party was reversing their actions, and finally gave up, because...IF the party of the first part raised hell...they would incriminate themselves FIRST!! I can't see why no one thinks that could happen....why not??? and it would also explain a couple of those candidates being told to give in WITHOUT a fight or recount...BECAUSE a recount would have shown what really happened...and it would also explain why */Rove/Cheney were so gd sure they had it all sewn up, beforehand...because they fully intended to keep control...and they had certain races they intended to influence unfairly(steal)...but someone was dishing it right back at them, for the first time...it caught them completely off guard...see that's my tinfoil conspiracy...and I absolutely believe it could have happened exactly like that...but let's face it...IF that was the case, neither party would admit anything...

Then there was that picture someone posted of the meeting between Reid/Bush/Cheney and a couple others...showing Reid's hand gripping *'s shoulder, and at the same time, making Cheney bow into him to shake his hand.....gave me the feeling that Reid was telling them both, we gotcha, so from now on, we'll be playing on an even field...JMO...

I don't know how this fallacy of mine would play in Ohio, Florida California or anywhere else...but it sure as hell makes me feel good to think that the Dems just might have shown some steel reserve with their actions for once, instead of playing Mr.Nice Guy again...disclaimer: strictly my own opinion...I have NO proof that anything of this sort took place..
wb

If I could borrow Jon Stewart for a moment:

WHHAAAAA??

Yeah that's the ticket, I counter-hacked the vote for you guys :sarcasm:

Doug D.

I said, I have NO proof, that what I said, was only my opinion/theory...I didn't accuse YOU of stealing votes, or counter hacking the vote(I don't know where you got that??)...I would LOVE to THINK the Democrats showed some balls(oops, 'scuse me..steel)and perhaps beat the rep's at their own game..Key words here...I would LOVE TO THINK....

sarcasm be damned...be sarcastic all you want...but I'm still allowed to have my opinions, as are you...there were things happening on election night, that were mighty suspicious....and as I watched it the whole night, and also watched the posts on du, there were people questioning what was going on...so I just put together my own little scenario as to what might have happened...

Take a chill pill and don't be so touchy...you had an opinion, you stated it...I had a theory and I stated it...yeah..I will admit...it thrilled me to think that maybe, just maybe....the dems might have dished out a little payback this time, so let me say this again.....just my opinion....
wb

That is not logic. It is a logical fallacy.

What you are saying can be summed up in short like this: If the repubs stole the election in 2000, 2002, and 2004, they would steal the elections of a week ago. Since they didn't steal the elections of a week ago, then they must not have stolen the other ones. Symbolically, this takes the form of:

If P then Q
Not Q
Therefore, not P

In the world of logic, this is called fucking up.

THIS is valid:

If P then Q
P
Therefore Q

What you wrote is a logical fallacy. But let's say you didn't (you did, but we'll pretend) and the statement you made is valid. YOU STILL HAVEN'T PROVED THAT THERE WASN'T ELECTRONIC VOTER FRAUD IN THIS ELECTION. You have no idea whether there was or not. There still could have been, but it could hsve been overwhelmed by a huge voter turnout for the dems.

This is the reason people keep screaming at you. You have a gigantic hole in your argument, and you insist on not seeing it and calling anyone who draws attention to it a tinfoil hatter.

already, please:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

:tinfoilhat:

:hi:

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

tinfoil hatters.

Please read the article I linked to.

LOL

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Helped get Lampson elected to DeLay's old seat. \

GOTV, poll-watching 2 weeks of early voting and from 5:45 a.m. to 8:15 p.m. 11/7, and I'm still not finished filing reports w/ the DOJ on the lame Republican antics I witnessed, thank you very much!

I spent over a 1,000 hours this year working for the previously mentioned Democratic campaigns doing everything from voter database management to canvassing to phonebanking to taking out the trash when needed.

Doug D.

you the boss of decision-making WHY? Tell me again.

No one said I was the "boss" of decision making...

Are you going to follow my posts around all day and act like a jerk?

I can post all day too if I have to.

Doug D.

votes and tossing out legitimate votes.

More effective for the GOP was getting Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush to illegitimately purge the voter rolls of tens of thousands of African American voters as "felons".

Doug D.

But that Diebold should be able to provide the machines and give $$ to the rethugs at the same time is just wrong, IMO.

Not everything has to be computerized. We could just use old fashioned methods on this, it wouldn't kill us. Then any fraud would have to be individualized or limited to an area - with these machines the possibility for mass fraud is there. We need at least the paper trails - something to check against to see if there was a hacking.

And it is naive to think there are not those that will TRY to do it, even if they haven't thus far.

We're supposed to consider every single possibility for terrorism there is, but for this, we're supposed not to worry about it, I guess.

I guess nobody reads my posts.

I am NOT arguing that everything has to be computerized.

I was just pointing out the defects I see in the current computerized systems and how to make them much harder to hack.

Don't believe that just because there are paper ballots, that voter fraud can't occur either.

Ever hear of Mayor Daley (the original one that is) in Chicago?

Doug D.

Why? Why do we need to 'fix' something that isn't broken?

Why are electronic voting machines needed at all?

60,000,000 ballots entirely by hand in the next election.

Doug De Clue

Posted right here in GD before the election.

I'd rather have a slow accurate result... Than a quick theft any day.

Who says after all is said and done it's that much quicker, anyway?

Have you ever counted anything in large quantities, money or votes or anything?

I have.

It takes a long time.

Now I could care less about Diebold's sales sheet or their profit margins.

Why can't we have both a quick and an accurate count?

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

of what is 'REALLY' inside or what it is doing.

I'd rather have more protection on my vote than the mere 'faith' that 'you said so'.

I'll say again... I'll believe my own lying eyes and the actual ballots.

In all of your expertises did you ever encounter why computers are called...
'The Anything Machine'?

It's because they can be made to do 'anything'... To include skewing an election.

Not enough 'checks and balances' for my taste.

PAPER BALLOTS
and a 3% manual count to start with.

Everybody loves to bash without reading..

Doug D.

There's no rush...

No need for a machine in there.

I'm always suspicious of a salesman who pushes a decision... 'Right Quick'.

Anyone remember November - December of 2000. I do.. I was living in Broward County at the time, down the street from the SOE.

Doug D.

Instead of an accurate count.

Pounding on walls and such to impede the count.

No result was necessary until January 20th or so... Not a Constitutional Crisis as it
was played in the Right Wing Media. NO EMERGENCY!

Provisions were made for an extended vote counting period due to the fact... The Constitution
was written before these idiotic electronic vote stealing appliances were conceived. They
used paper ballots.

tell me something I don't know.


Doug D.

I knew sooner or later someone would be referring to that flimsy piecce of paper
called the Constitution -

See if the Founding Fathers knew so much they'd have had themselves some reliable
Diebold equipment - NOT!

The UK hand-counted 27,110,727 votes overnight for their May 5 General Election last year.

but you only get to pick two.

Faster, better, cheaper.. pick any two...

I use that on my boss fairly regularly...

Doug D.

:eyes:

an arrogant asshole.

Sorry if I have offended you.

Doug D.

My proof?

The time stamps on the far right hand side of the page.

It is "tinfoil hat" to go around blaming everybody for a giant unprovable conspiracy. That's how a lot of us Dems here in Central Florida viewed Clint Curtis and his band of merry men in the 24th district. Tin foil hat.

Sorry if you don't like it..

Doug D.

:rofl:

and I don't see them falling apart. There will always be doubters as long as the vote counting isn't transparent. And it should be, completely.

Paper and has their vote tallies done within three or four days

Canada population 30 Million
USA population 300 Million

so by your guideline it will take 30 to 40 days to count the election results...

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

You state that it would take 10 times longer to count our votes because we have 10 times the population. Why? Can we not also have 10 times the counters?

I think there are a whole array of things that are causing problems with elections; not the least of which is at least the POTENTIAL for hacking a vote. That potential does not need to be there.

Open source code would be the first place I would start if it's got to be electronic. As indicated in the video, as systems stand now, no one would have had a reason not to certify the vote in which they demonstrated they could change the votes by only modifying the memory card. No red flags. Nothing. Why is there executable code on the memory card that can be modified?

As far as the Democrats winning this cycle, you have partly explained it yourself, why they could not have done it this time. All indicators pointed to large Democratic gains. They have to keep themselves within some semblance of plausibility. If they had set it to keep the House and Senate, do you not think there would have been a large outcry? Then what?

The biggst problem is, there are LOTS of reasons to doubt the system and they are not limited to the machines. Let's fix those reasons. All of them.

Olafr

and problems usually grow exponentially not linearly with size.

Doug D.

Sounds like an assumption to me.

They can't get money to do what they need to be doing now at SOE offices.

Doug D.

machines.

:shrug:

Just sayin'.

because it was such a classic screwup the 110th Congress will have to go back to the drawing boards on this issue like Wylie Coyote and start again with more money. If the Congress doesn't do it the states certainly won't because they don't have any money after the Bush admin and GOP shifted all the burden of NCLB and the social safety net generally to the states.

Doug D.

I'm assuming that the proportions of turnout are roughly the same in both countries.

65% of registered voters tend to vote in Presidential general elections in the U.S.
55% of registered voters tend to vote in off year general elections in the U.S.

Approximately twice the entire population of Canada voted in the last United States Presidential general election. They are different orders of magnitude in scale - that was my point.

Doug D.

Holland is waaaaaaaay smaller, has higher voter turnout, and they're having problems w/ e-voting too. Comments welcome.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=458554&mesg_id=458554

I'd also like to read your thoughts on Sequoia's one-touch yellow button reset-to-manual capability, which allows one to vote sevral times in succession.

Thanks.

Everybody is ASSUMING I like touchscreens when in fact I HATE them and my original post said as much.

It's the touchscreens that are the REAL problem, not optiscan voting machines.

Doug D.

If you thought touchscreens were bad... run as fast as you can from internet voting...nothing is safe then...

Doug D.

What's the rush, anyway?

don't kid yourself...

We took 3 days to machine count and verify the vote in Virginia and Montana in two races that weren't really as close as the Gore race in 2000...

It will take 30 days at least to do it right.

Doug D.

LMAO

I don't understand why that is such a big deal!
Time we have PLENTY of. It should not even be a factor in the election process, IMO!

That argument is BOGUS from the get-go.

based on the fact that the Electoral College must meet by a specific date to vote as we saw in 2001.

Elections certainly don't HAVE to be solved in 2 or 3 days but stretching them out for 30 to 45 days is always painful as we saw in 2000.

Doug D.

and reported in NYT that Gore won, on Sept 12th 2001

The so-called "Hursti Hack" was to prove that an almost certainly designed-in vulnerability exists on Diebold Opti-Scan machines.

Here's the skinny:

The Zero Total Report at the beginning of elections is used to prove that the memory card used to store the votes is clean. So where did Diebold choose to store the code that runs that report? Why on the very same memory card, of course.

What Hursti did was:

1.) Put negative and positive pre-totals on the memory card.

2.) Change the Zero Total Report to print Zeros if any total is negative.

That was what happened in the Sanchez demonstration.

same results that Hursti found.

that Diebold has DESIGNED these things to be hacked.

A design like that is no accident and computer scientists are shocked.

You know, you have this big house with 16 doors and you use the same key for every door and then you publish a picture of the key...

I'm all FOR DieBold, ESS, Sequoia and other EVM vendors being REQUIRED to post their source and their design documents on the web where everybody can get a good look at it.

OPEN SOURCE is the only way to go to find the bugs quickly and eliminate the vulnerabilities.

In fact it's the whole model behind Linux.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

That we would never know whether they published the real open source coding or
a fib-ster's version.

I want PAPER! Period... THen there is no need to put our great computer tech minds
into endless struggles of de-coding code.

Compiler instructions (a make file)
and
a CRC32 checksum so that you can tell what software is running on the machine.

I do this for a living folks and this is how you do release builds. You include the source, the makefile and the checksum.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

can't spend trillions upgrading a busted system that nobody has any faith in.

We must demand a "VOTER VERIFIED PAPER BALLOT AS THE BALLOT OF RECORD"! NOW!

E-Voting: this millennium's 'New Coke'.

One of my recommendations was PAPER BALLOT.

Another was sample hand counts that would lead to total hand counts if discrepancies occur...

You people have got to take off the tin foil hats and start focusing on getting the vote out for elections rather than complaining about poor results afterwards.


Doug D.
Orlando, FL

The hack can be part of any firmware or anywhere in memory.

so it can be compiled using more than one compiler.

It seems pretty preposterous to presume that someone in Redmond at Microsoft has been tasked to write a compiler to look for source code that is designed to create an executable related to voting and then "hack" that... There could be gremlins putting drugs into my coffee in the morning too.

Doug D.

What company would be more likely to use its compilers to insert back doors or easter eggs into the executables it produces -- perhaps at the behest of various national security agencies?

Note that compilers can be themselves easily altered/infected to install an easter egg or back door in the executable code they produce under certain conditions. They can even be programmed to then erase all evidence of this infection from their own executables.

This isn't rocket science. It's System Security 201.

Nonetheless, I do not advocate use of MS compilers, I only mention them because they are just the predominant compiler on the market marketshare-wise (not technically speaking.)

Actually most of the time I use a very specialized and unique development tool called National Instruments LabVIEW designed specifically for programming with test instrumentation and I drop down into VB or VC as required to fill in gaps in functionality.

For my campaign related code, I write generally in VB because it offers a quick and dirty interface into databases through OLE automation but there are plenty of alternatives available and I have looked particularly at so-called "LAMP" or Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP applications as to where I want to move my voter database work but haven't had time to go there yet. I hope to do so in time for 2008 and also to bring MapServer on line as well for my efforts.

Doug D.

I had enough on my hands when I went in and observed on election night Nov 2nd 2004

I can just imagine having to

1) educate myself on the protocols you are mentioning
2) trying to find if any of the employees there would know what I am talking about

And that is just at the end of the day - How do we continue to use the machinery and continue to hope that the average voter can walk into a polling place and have the equipment up and running, with the highly skilled staff it takes to ensure that it is up and running right ETC.

With paper and pencil the worst would be that your guldarn pencil would break. And if it did, the senior citizens that usually are the most frequently seen faces on election day would know very well how to solve that problem

as precinct captain.

I would have to quit this to do that.

I understand that we have horribly underfunded and undertrained SOE's but whatchagonnado?

Hopefully the 110th Congress can provide some real money to fix this.

Doug D.

a pen that would write in the non-gravity fields of outer space - and after so many millions or
hundreds of thousands had nothing to show for all their time and money- whereas the Russians used Dah Ta Deum (flourish) a pencil!

At the cost of nothing.

You really want all this training and every election year another contingent of computer experts examining the code - when all it would take is pencils and paper? Why?

Most software is very poorly designed and has many accidental problems with it.

How do you judge intent on the part of DieBold anyways in the code?

Was there something like

//Declare voter count as short int so that we can bias the vote with negative numbers...
short int votecount;

in the source code?

You folks are villifying DieBold for all the wrong reasons... they're real problem is being so focused on corporate image and profits that they don't want to admit to software bugs.

Doug D.

You can whistle pass the graveyard and obfuscate all you want. The REAL experts are all over this one and they are shocked.

You don't know what you're even talking about.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

:rofl:

You owe me a new keyboard...

a bit first.

http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/

I even have met and talked with some of the people IN the documentary IN PERSON - they live locally.

Doug D.

Perhaps you could audit a few courses at the local community college.

I laid out my credentials...

What the hell are yours?

Doug D.

IMHO, they know FAR more than you.

I'm a Carnegie Mellon University grad with 32 years of experience in programming. But I wouldn't put my credentials up against, say, Dr. David Dill or Dr. Avi Rubin or Dr. Ed Felten.

What makes you think that they are going to be any more likely to identify coding errors than professionals such as you or me who code everyday for a living?

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

I've talked to Dr. Dill of Stanford. He's a sharp cookie. Oh, I know far more about Microsoft operating systems and databases. He knows FAR more about encryption, buffer overrun vulnerabilities and such.

Bottom line: I know for a fact that the computer science community is all over this and I'd be surprised if Diebold stays in the election machine business much longer. Their source code has been exposed and the longer they stay in business, the more will be revealed about their culpability.

ES&S, Sequoia, and Hart Intercivic are another matter. But, so far we've looked at one example and found one (IMHO) guilty party. How long the others will avoid scrutiny is the real question here.

DieBold's biggest crime is really the same as Don Rumsfeld's and George Bush's:

They don't like criticism and they are too secretive.

Thus problems perpetuate and propagate both in software and in foreign policy like Iraq.

Doug D.

proprietary code owned by the government and reviewed and approved by a panel of experts/interested parties. I think truly open source software available for anyone to review invites hacking and in fact gieves hackers a huge head start.

Yes, I suppose you are correct that it might give "hackers" a "head start" but it would also give a lot of professional coders out there the opportunity to spot bad code and call for fixes.

The closed code paradigm is what Microsoft and other COTS O/S manufacturers follow but then what happens is they either overlook bugs because of a relatively limited pool of persons looking for them, or on occasion try to hide or spin the bugs as "features". While 99.99% of us (including the companies that write software) often don't know about these hidden bugs, the real big time hackers find them anyways and exploit these hidden bugs.

I would prefer if the whole world could see the code, that way these bugs get found and fixed very quickly as in the Linux open source world.

It also provides accountability and traceability to the software that otherwise we must take on faith. (Same goes for radar guns and intoximeter/breathalyzer machines.)

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

has not been tampered with. Since we can't imagine why or how anyone with the requisite expertise would take the effort the screw with our systems from the ground up (including hardware, firmware and compilers), we simply don't demand the level of security that something as important as fair and reliable elections require.

and recognize that there are clearly issues with code bugs and security vulnerabilities.

That doesn't mean that there is intent behind them or that the vote has actually been hacked - only that a theoretical possibility exists FOR it to be hacked.

Hence I have discussed what I saw demonstrated and how it can be made better.

Doug D.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
:rofl:NO, REALLY!:rofl:
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Right back atcha.

Doug D.

and I'm an expert too.

Doug D.

I would not describe the simple manipulation of voter database tables
stored on SOE Sanchez' computer system as a "hack".

That really stretches the term "hack".

All that was done was the opening and manipulation of a standard database
file (it appeared to simply be a Microsoft Access .mdb file) using some
simple SQL queries which did the obvious and expected thing - it altered the
stored records. It wasn't really much of an impressive "magic trick" to me
as a programmer.

...


When you "knew" that the hack was to the memory card's report program?

The first was the voter DB file edit.

The second was the flash card hack.


Doug D.
Orlando, FL

Sanchez was shown the flash card hack.

AND THEN demoed it to Dean...

watch it again...

Doug D.

I just don't believe it was on a wide enough scale to throw a landslide, just affecting close elections where a few bad machines selectively quartered in battle grounds states and in particular districts, and in conjuction with voter supression, and areas where they could possibly get by with it. However, I do agree with the point that what were bigger problems were of the good old fashioned voter suppression variety.

while I don't believe that intentional hacking was going on, I do not believe that the touchscreen machines are properly registered (calibrated) in many places and these result in erroneous undervotes and misvotes in many cases (likely what happened in FL-13) especially when voters do not pay attention to what the machine says after they hit the buttons.

I do believe however that it is theoretically possible and the issue should be addressed expeditiously by the 110th Congress and our state legislatures as well as addressing the other voter suppression issues I discussed.

Doug D.

You have offered no facts as to why you say the vote wasn't stolen in previous years except that the Democrats won this year. I just find that to be a rather simplistic conclusion to what seems like a very complex issue.

his reasoning/conceit goes like this:

the dems won 2006 midterms, therefore there was no electronic manipulation of 2006.
therefore there was no electronic manipulation in 2000, 2002, and 2004

the fallacy is this:

winning the 2006 midterms is not necessary or sufficient evidence for the conclusion that "no electronic manipulation" occured.

what the OP has provided is an opinion backed up by his educational and vocational credentials. given those creds, i was expecting some insight into the issue -- not just another "so say i" refutation of electronic election fraud.

I said it MOST LIKELY did not occur and I also said that it is theoretically possible nonetheless.

Everything is so black and white with all my detractors in this thread.

I really can't keep up with all the nonsense that keeps getting posted, everyone wants to pile on 100 to 1.

Doug D.

and doesn't steal anything while he is there.

Would you say he "most likely" wasn't a thief and assume any past accusations were false?

Add to that, the thief is known to constantly be leaving people's back doors unlocked? Would that change your suspicions?

If nothing was taken?

And he wouldn't be a thief, just a trespasser if nothing was stolen...

So much for your analogies.

Doug D.

We know that repubs have gone to extreme lengths to supress and alter the vote. And been convicted of it in several instances.

So, assume the thief has been caught before. Now apply the rest of my argument my argument.