Flawed Software in Voting Machines

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Voting Company Reverses Stand: Flawed software WAS used in Georgia and
other elections

(excerpt)
"Georgia, perhaps hardest hit by the growing Diebold scandal, is now
facing renewed questions about missing memory cards and other
irregularities. On election night during the 2002 general election, 67
memory cards, containing thousands of votes, went missing in Fulton
County. Also, according to documents provided to Santa Clara County,
Diebold machines experienced "buffer overrun" problems during the
election, requiring poll workers to turn them on and off, and if not
done properly, this can also cause loss of votes."

- Official to city of Boston: There are "kinks" in touch screens

According to an Aug. 4 article in Wired.com: Diebold company spokesman
Mike Jacobsen "confirmed that the source code Rubin's team examined was
last used in November 2002 general elections in Georgia, Maryland and in
counties in California and Kansas."
(http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59874,00.html)

Actually, the software may have been used in as many as 13 states and
197 counties, according to Diebold documents given to Santa Clara County
in Feb. 2003 (http://www.blackboxvoting.org/mfr.pdf) - list of counties
at bottom.

Earlier, Diebold had told reporters that the software which contained
"stunning security flaws" that made hacking easy, was an older version
and never used in any election.

Yet it was used, and provably so. The Diebold software version was
easily verifiable:
- The FEC requires certification of voting machine software by version
number
- The certified version number matches what was studied by the Johns
Hopkins scientists. More: http://avirubin.com/vote/response.html

STILL "KINKS" IN THE TOUCH SCREENS: John Silvestro, a voting machine
representative in Boston who sells Diebold machines,
(http://www.lhsassociates.com), said the touch-screen system would cost
the city about six times as much money as optical scan machines which
have a paper audit trail, and that companies like his are still working
the kinks out of the touch-screen machines. Silvestro told the Boston
City Council that Boston was better off with optical scanners.
(http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/214/metro/Menino_OK_s_new_voting_mach
ines+.shtml)

Georgia, perhaps hardest hit by the growing Diebold scandal, is now
facing renewed questions about missing memory cards and other
irregularities. On election night during the 2002 general election, 67
memory cards, containing thousands of votes, went missing in Fulton
County. Also, according to documents provided to Santa Clara County,
Diebold machines experienced "buffer overrun" problems during the
election, requiring poll workers to turn them on and off, and if not
done properly, this can also cause loss of votes.

Georgia officials, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request by
Georgia voters, admitted that they did not have any of the certification
documents clearing use of the machines following a series of unexamined
program patches put on the machines right before the election. Georgia
law requires that any time software is updated, it must be recertified,
but the patches were never examined by testing labs. No one really knows
what was on the patches; Diebold denied that patches were done.
(http://www.blackboxvoting.org/lies.htm)

According to technicians (http://www.blackboxvoting.org/robgeorgia.htm)
who administered the patches, they were told to download them directly
off the Internet from the Diebold ftp site, rather than getting them
from Microsoft (as they would if they were Windows patches) or from the
Independent Testing Authority (as the Georgia examiner for voting
machines, Dr. Brit Williams  --
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/Williams.htm -- describes the required
procedure).

In a new controversy, researchers with BlackBoxVoting.org say they have
discovered that changes were made in the Windows operating system used
with the voting machines.

According to Dr. Doug Jones, a member of the Iowa Board of Examiners for
Elections and an expert congressional witness on electronic voting: "The
FEC/NASED Voting System Standards require that all software used in
voting systems be passed through a source-code audit, but there is an
exemption, in both the 1990 and 2002 editions of this standard, for
UNMODIFIED third-party 'COTS' software, that is, commercial
off-the-shelf software produced by a third party THAT HAS NOT BEEN
MODIFIED for use in the voting context. Use of Microsoft Windows and
Microsoft Office clearly qualifies for this exemption."
(http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldftp.html)

Jones says that Diebold made representations to him that they made no
changes whatsoever to the Windows operating system, yet new information
from Black Box Voting indicates that significant changes to Windows were
made.

"Source code files clearly show that Windows source code was modified."
says Bev Harris, author of 'Black Box Voting.' A new Freedom of
Information Act is now being filed in Georgia seeking to clarify whether
changes in Windows were disclosed and authorized, and Black Box Voting
researchers are examining what impact the changes have on the voting
program and its security.

OTHER STORY ANGLES:
- Experts point to secrecy, flaws in certification system
- Following the money trail: Lobbying, kickbacks and contributions
- Touch screens done right: Accurate, with a voter-verified paper trail,
NASED certified. (http://www.aitechnology.com/votetrakker2/home.htm)

COUNTIES THAT USE DIEBOLD TOUCH SCREENS
Alameda County, California
Kern County, California
Los Angeles County, California
Marin County, California
Modoc County, California
Plumas County, California
San Diego County, California
San Joaquin County, California
Solano County, California
Tulare County, California
El Paso County, Colorado
Saguache County, Colorado
Weld County, Colorado
===========================
GEORGIA: All 159 counties
===========================
Tippecanoe County, Indiana
Johnson County, Kansas
Jefferson County, Kentucky
Allegany County, Maryland
Dorchester County, Maryland
Montgomery County, Maryland
Prince Georges County, Maryland
===============================
MARYLAND: All counties in Maryland have purchased Diebold touch screen
machines =============================== Gaston County, North Carolina
Rowan County, North Carolina Douglas County, Nebraska Lancaster County,
Nebraska ===============================
OHIO: Most of Ohio is considering purchase of Diebold machines
=============================== Bradley County, Tennessee Rutherford
County, Tennessee Shelby County, Tennessee El Paso County, Texas
Franklin County, Texas Guadalupe County, Texas City of Norfolk, Virginia

CONTACTS (Internet sites: please remove these before posting):
- BEV HARRIS, author of "Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st
Century"
- KIM ALEXANDER: California Voter Foundation
- REP. RUSH HOLT: Architect of a HB 2239, a bill to require
voter-verified paper trails, eliminate risky remote access to voting
machines, and require proper auditing of results District office
- THE CARTER CENTER -- Alex Little)
- LOUISE WITT, reporter for Wired.com article  (Only
included this in case Diebold again changes story)
- JOHN SILVESTRO (Recommended avoiding touch screens to Boston)

================================ GEORGIA OFFICIALS
- CLIFFORD TATUM -- Assistant Director, Legal Affairs, Georgia State
Elections Division
- MICHAEL BARNES -- Georgia Division of Elections (Michael Barnes: "that
program was never used in any election" and "That FTP site did not
affect us in any way shape or form because we did not do any file
transferring from it.")
GARY POWELL -- Involved in purchase
decision for machines; Georgia Technology Authority
KARA SINKULE -- Spokeswoman for Georgia Sec'y of State Cathy Cox -
"We were aware
of the Diebold FTP site, but Georgia never used it (our model didn't
require us to)." The Diebold manual, however, on page 322, specifically
instructs users to upgrade the software from the FTP site.
CHRIS RIGGALL
-- Spokesman for the Georgia Secretary of State, author of internal memo
about Georgia patches
================================ COMPUTER SCIENTISTS
- DOUGLAS W. JONES, Associate Professor, The University of Iowa, Iowa
Board of Examiners for Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems and
expert congressional witness on electronic voting machines
- DR. DAVID DILL, Electronic Voting Expert, Stanford University Dept. of
Computer Science
- Dr. Rebecca Mercuri
================================ DIEBOLD PERSONNEL
- JOE RICHARDSON or MICHAEL JACOBSEN: Diebold official spokesmen:

- ROBERT JOHN UROSEVICH ("BOB") - Diebold Election Systems CEO
- GREGG LOWE - Diebold Elections Exec; close to Bob Urosevich; witnessed
touch screen failures in Georgia.
- TALBOT IREDALE: Diebold head programmer and a stockholder:
 ================================ TESTING AND CERTIFICATION
- SHAWN SOUTHWORTH: Official voting machine certifier for the United
States (see information in article below)
- DR. BRIT WILLIAMS: Official voting machine examiner and member of
NASED board that selects voting machine certifiers
- R. DOUG LEWIS: Head of "The Election Center" which organizes NASED and
NASS
================================ Background on Harris:
- Broke the story on Senator Chuck Hagel's ties to the voting machine
company that counted his votes (Oct. 10, 2003);
- Discovered the 40,000 unprotected Diebold files on the open web site
on Jan. 23, 2003
- Interviewed company officials about the Diebold ftp files on Feb. 4,
2003 and broke the story on Feb. 5
- Discovered that 22,000 unexamined program patches were administered in
Georgia, and obtained confirmation from technicians and the Georgia
Secretary of State (Diebold denied that patches were done)
- Demonstrated that in the Diebold voting system, passwords can be
bypassed, the county tabulation system uses a triple-ledger set of books
where vote totals don't have to match, and that audit logs can be
overwritten (July 8, 2003). Screen shots of this hack are available at
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/access-diebold.htm

--
<http://www.groundtruthinvestigations.com/>