2015 | CTVotersCount.org

Sierra Club pitches nonscience nonsense for obscure company

It seems that for the Sierra Club, reason and science end at the edge of the environment. They are now touting a product for Internet voting from a company that simultaneously claims that they have a product that is “a revolutionary mobile voting platform designed to securely cast votes in elections across the globe.” while running a Contest awarding $230,000 to actually accomplish that “In this Challenge, we are asking Solvers for help in overcoming the significant obstacles that stand in the way of bringing safe, secure, and easy voting to people worldwide.”

The article link from the Sierra Club goes to Huffington Post: Why You Might Vote For the Next President From Your Couch [Update: Link has been removed from Huffington Post and updated at the Sierra Club] <read> Read what you can about the company, Votem here: <read>

For many years my career in Computer Science involved evaluating software from large and small companies for use in a large company. Later for close to a decade I worked for a couple of small startups, building and marketing data communications software. One of those was successful, started by an engineer with a working product in demand before the doors opened. The other, was started by a serial entrepreneur, who I later learned was also a serial failure. He was good at getting venture capitol and publicity for attractive concepts, lacking feasibility.

My BS detectors go up when I see a company web site touting their revolutionary product, completely missing information on the company structure, missing information on principles, with no customer success stories, and touting their expertise at getting media placement! I am disappointed that the Sierra Club is sucked in.

Electronic voting is far from ready for prime time. I see that the Challenge and award is just for paper designs to solve some of the many challenges of electronic voting. Here is what top security scientists, computer scientists, and voting experts report after an exhaustive study: https://www.usvotefoundation.org/news/E2E-VIV-press

I wonder who Votem will have evaluate the submissions? If their system is already secure as their web site claims, why do they need this help?

My BS detector is confirmed by their blog trashing science and scientists?
http://votem.com/blog/

I see the first entry cites errors by Einstein and others, and claiming therefor that those skeptical about Internet voting are wrong:
http://votem.com/internet-mobile-voting-is-unachievable/

The world is full of experts. Very intelligent and well-meaning people make predictions about our world every day. And because we are all human, many experts get it wrong; and some in a very big way.

Just the same we can point to industry “experts” who have made many “errors” which coincidentally helped their products. We recall the doctors claiming the safety of tobacco, the claims that our nuclear waste problems would be solved years ago, that fracking is safe, that we would all be driving in flying cars by now, and now that some computer systems are unhackable. There are a lot more startups on the scrap heap along with failed corporate and government projects, that Einstein predictions.

The second blog post is entitled “Beware of The Experts”. The third claims support of Republican presidential candidates.

It is as if Sierra wrote positively about a Challenge by a startup energy services company to award prizes for white papers describing how to do safe fracking or building safe oil pipelines, touting they were just around the corner, leaving the impression that we might as well not bother with green technology investment and conservation.

Cyber risks of Internet voting and electronic voting

Two articles this week on cyber risks, one refuting Colorado’s Secretary of State on online voting. Another articulating the risks of hacking electronic voting in general.

Stay tuned and stay involved!

Two articles this week on cyber risks, one refuting Colorado’s Secretary of State on online voting. Another articulating the risks of hacking electronic voting in general.

From the Colorado Statesman: Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams obscured key facts in online-voting commentary <read>

Last week’s guest commentary by Secretary of State Wayne Williams in The Colorado Statesman obscured some important facts. He was responding to criticism of his new rule establishing criteria for the casting of election ballots by email.

In it, Secretary Williams implies that the federal government expanded voting by email. He writes, “The federal government, along with the Colorado General Assembly, expanded the electronic ballot transmission for military and overseas voters.” In fact the federal government has neither endorsed nor expanded the return of marked ballots over email…

Secretary Williams claims that of the nearly 3,400 ballots sent back electronically in 2014 there was not a single report of tampering. This raises two issues: First, “no report” is meaningless when tampering of online ballots can be done undetectably. Experienced hackers can penetrate a system for a very long time without detection, as seen in recently publicized successful attacks on the FBI and Pentagon. A Colorado voter whose email ballot has been altered would never know; the elections office also will never know…Second, for years there has been no state rule to guide these vulnerable voters through this security minefield, nor to spell out the very narrow parameters required by law, needlessly putting many more than even those 3,400 votes at risk…

Given our shared concern is for ensuring the safe return of military and overseas voters’ ballots, the record of other states can be instructive. Minnesota and Wisconsin consistently lead the nation in the rate of military and overseas ballots returned, and neither permits online ballot return

Read the article for more.

From WhoWhatWhy: Foreigners Could Hack U.S. Elections, Experts Say <read>

What if a foreign head of state had the power to handpick our next President? It sounds like the plot of a movie, but it actually might be in the realm of possibility.

Most people take our elections for granted. The few who don’t often suspect that one party might be trying to steal votes from the other. But they don’t envision that the theft could be coming from outside US borders.

What experts are telling us, though, is that our voting machines are so insecure that all elections, whether at the national, state, or local level, are vulnerable to being attacked by hackers in other countries.

We’ll add that maybe foreigners might scare some of the complacent, yet all these attacks could be done by Americans bent by many similar motives and more.

We also add a specific added threat on our shores of insider attack – those with access the the system who can, desire, or are intimidated into changing the results.

For example, Russia may want to prevent a hawk like John McCain, who wants weapons in the Ukraine and faces a tough battle for his job next fall, from getting reelected.

Israel’s leaders believe that the Iran nuclear deal would doom their country, so if they thought they could get away with it, would they try to put in office US representatives who share that view?…

This begs the question: Given that the security at some of our most protected institutions can be breached, and given that US elections pose an enticing target for our adversaries, what would prevent a foreign agent from hacking our ballot boxes?

The answer: Not much.

Experts indicate that the election systems in place today do not provide the adequate protection that would be able to stop a foreign hacker — a hacker anywhere, in fact — from rigging our races. Even worse, these attacks could go undetected…

Since such attacks can easily go unnoticed, evidence of remote hacks is scarce. But it’s likely they’re happening more than we know, considering that unencrypted connections over the open internet aren’t too hard for a knowledgeable college student to breach…

One report [on Internet voting], produced by computer scientists at the request of the Pentagon, examined a pilot iVoting project and concluded that an internet- and PC-based voting system presented “fundamental security problems” that couldn’t be fixed without a “radical breakthrough.”

Cyber attacks, the report concluded, “could occur on a large scale, and could be launched by anyone from a disaffected lone individual to a well-financed enemy agency outside the reach of U.S. law.”…

Despite its seemingly safe appearance, there are subtle ways the eVoting [polling place and central count voting] process could be susceptible to attack. For, in many cases, these systems actually do connect online.

John Sebes, CTO of the Open Source Elections Technology Foundation (OSET), told WhoWhatWhy that the most significant logistical issue for local officials is something called the election management system, or EMS.

As a component of the overall apparatus, the EMS is used for election data management and data entry — most likely on a PC in an elections office. Sebes said that, in theory, EMSs are never supposed to be online, but sometimes they get connected anyway. Not only do hackers then have the potential to breach election data on the PC, but malware could affect the removable media when it is taken out of the PC and inserted into the voting machines.

For now Connecticut is relatively safe from outsider attacks domestic and foreign.

While the Legislature voted for Internet voting, Secretary of the State Denise Merill maintained her staunch opposition, pointing out that Internet voting would violate our state constitutional requirement for a secret ballot. Fortunately, a constitutional amendment to change that died between committee and the floor, in 2014. It should stay that way.
Right now we do not connect our optical scanners to external equipment. In fact, their external ports are sealed. Memory cards are never in a device connected to the outside world. We do all our election results summary by addition and transcription from the printed scanner tapes. However, the Secretary of the State’s Office has plans for acquiring GEMs systems for municipalities to speed the electronic calculations of results. If, and its a big “if” right now, the GEMs systems are pristine, never were or never will be connected to the Internet, we would remain relatively safe from outsider attack. Stay tuned and involved!

Remember that we are still at risk of insider attacks, where our only protection would be adequate ballot security, audits, and recounts.

Larry Wilkerson on Computerized Elections

Are Larry Wilkerson’s concerns justified? Without sufficient audits and recounts, we can never be certain. As he tells us, history tends toward cheating whenever it is possible.

Our position is that paper ballots and optical scanning followed by sufficient security, audits, and recounts is the optimum system available. Yet, in Connecticut we need stronger security, audits, and recounts to achieve justified integrity and confidence in our elections.

Are Larry Wilkerson’s concerns justified? Without sufficient audits and recounts, we can never be certain. As he tells us, history tends toward cheating whenever it is possible.

The Selfie Threat To Democracy

What could be more patriotic in our narcissistic social-media age than posting a picture of yourself on Facebook with your marked ballot for president? Show off your support for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) or former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Last week, a federal court in New Hampshire struck down that state’s ban on ballot selfies as a violation of the First Amendment right of free-speech expression.

That might seem like a victory for the American Way. But the judge made a huge mistake because without the ballot-selfie ban, we could see the reemergence of the buying and selling of votes — and even potential coercion from employers, union bosses and others…

From Reuters, by Richard L. Hansen Why the selfie is a threat to democracy <read>

What could be more patriotic in our narcissistic social-media age than posting a picture of yourself on Facebook with your marked ballot for president? Show off your support for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) or former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Last week, a federal court in New Hampshire struck down that state’s ban on ballot selfies as a violation of the First Amendment right of free-speech expression.

That might seem like a victory for the American Way. But the judge made a huge mistake because without the ballot-selfie ban, we could see the reemergence of the buying and selling of votes — and even potential coercion from employers, union bosses and others…

In his 42-page opinion, Federal District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro offered an erudite and thoughtful discussion of the history of vote buying in the United States. You would think his analysis would have led him to uphold the ban. But it didn’t. Instead, his analysis fell apart in its legal reasoning…

Barbadoro also said the law was not narrowly tailored, given that nothing would stop someone from posting on Facebook, or elsewhere, information about how he or she voted. What this analysis misses is that a picture of a valid voted ballot, unlike a simple expression of how someone voted, is unique in being able to prove how someone voted…

The social-media age gives people plenty of tools for political self-expression. New Hampshire’s law is a modest way to make sure that this patriotic expression does not give anyone the tools to corrupt the voting process.

We agree 1000%. See our earlier post: Common Sense: The good, bad, and ugly secret ballot

***** Update 8/25/2015
More from the New York Times <read>

NonScience Nonsense, another claim of electronic voting security

In late June a respected source published a non-peer-reviewed article: The case for election technology Which despite its title is actually a marketing piece disguised as science, not for election technology but for electronic voting, including Internet voting. The case actually made is for skepticism and peer-review.

That skepticism is well addressed in posts by Jeremy Epstein and E. John Sebes: How not to measure security and A Hacked Case For Election Technology

In late June a respected source published a non-peer-reviewed article: The case for election technology <read>. Which despite its title is actually a marketing piece disguised as science, not for election technology but for electronic voting, including Internet voting. The case actually made is for skepticism and peer-review.

That skepticism is well addressed in posts by Jeremy Epstein and E. John Sebes: How not to measure security <read> and A Hacked Case For Election Technology <read>

From Epstein:

But the most outrageous statement in the article is this:

The important thing is that, when all of these methods [for providing voting system security] are combined, it becomes possible to calculate with mathematical precision the probability of the system being hacked in the available time, because an election usually happens in a few hours or at the most over a few days. (For example, for one of our average customers, the probability was 1×10-19. That is a point followed by 19 [sic] zeros and then 1). The probability is lower than that of a meteor hitting the earth and wiping us all out in the next few years—approximately 1×10-7 (Chemical Industry Education Centre, Risk-Ed n.d.)—hence it seems reasonable to use the term ‘unhackable’, to the chagrin of the purists and to my pleasure.

As noted previously, we don’t know how to measure much of anything in security, and we’re even less capable of measuring the results of combining technologies together (which sometimes makes things more secure, and other times less secure). The claim that putting multiple security measures together gives risk probabilities with “mathematical precision” is ludicrous. And calling any system “unhackable” is just ridiculous, as Oracle discovered some years ago when the marketing department claimed their products were “unhackable”. (For the record, my colleagues in engineering at Oracle said they were aghast at the slogan.)

As Ron Rivest said at a CITP symposium, if voting vendors have “solved the Internet security and cybersecurity problem, what are they doing implementing voting systems? They should be working with the Department of Defense or financial industry. These are not solved problems there.” If Smartmatic has a method for obtaining and measuring security with “mathematical precision” at the level of 1019, they should be selling trillions of dollars in technology or expertise to every company on the planet, and putting everyone else out of business.

We would add that just because an election happens over a short period is not a reason to claim any increased level of security or reduced vulnerability:

Programming election systems occurs months and weeks ahead of the election. Systems are vulnerable for their whole life up to and including each election. Its like saying air traffic control systems are not vulnerable to errors because directing each airplane occurs over a very short period of time in each control center. Of course that never happens.
And the rush to provide results quickly, all including the work of tired, lightly trained, technically challenged, and often partisan officials increases the vulnerability.
And the very suggestion of less vulnerability actually can have the effect of reducing vigilance, and increasing risk.

From Sebes:

I also disagree with most of Mugica’s comparisons between eVoting and paper voting because from a U.S. perspective (and I admit this review is all from a U.S.-centric viewpoint) it’s comparing the wrong two things: paperless eVoting verses hand-marked hand-counted paper ballots. It ignores the actual systems that are the most widely used for election integrity in the U.S.

Now, perhaps Mugica’s argument is for eVoting more broadly, without insisting on the paperless part. But in that case, most of America already has some form of eVoting, using voting machines and paper ballots or records, coupled with some form of paper ballot audit to detect malfunctioning machines. In that case, you don’t need to claim mythical security properties along with implied mythical perfect performance. If some equipment doesn’t work right – whether from hacks or good old fashioned software bugs – the audit can detect and correct the results.

1. The Article Misses the Point

This paper completely misses the point that it is not paper-voting vs. electronic-voting, but rather that each is insufficient. In reality, transparent (in technology and process), accurate, secure, and verifiable elections require a combination of people + paper + process + computers, each cross-checking the other. The majority of U.S. election officials now commonly understand this as the norm. Either that, or the author assumes that eVoting includes support for ballot audit (more below), and is arguing against paper-only hand-count elections—a practice that is no longer relevant in the U.S.

2. The Article Ignores Common U.S. Election Practices

“The security of a paper-based, manual vote with a manual count is extremely low. Single copies of each vote make them easy to tamper with or destroy.”

True, but only for the most procedurally simple methods of conducting hand counts or hand audits. Just last week, the state of Wisconsin conducted a public manual ballot audit that was a model of transparency and integrity.

Security is not the main issue for either hand count or machine count. Accuracy is.

We have long held that optical scan, including strong ballot security, sufficient audits and recounts is the best available system today.

Online Voter Registration: Vulnerable too!

An independent report by the state auditor general found Florida’s voter registration database flawed.

Susanna Randolph, one of the candidates running for Alan Grayson’s 9th district congressional seat, sent a letter today asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch to launch a Department of Justice probe into the state’s voter system.

Report from Florida station, WMFE: Randolph Calls on DOJ Probe into Florida’s Voter Registration System <read>

An independent report by the state auditor general found Florida’s voter registration database flawed.

Susanna Randolph, one of the candidates running for Alan Grayson’s 9th district congressional seat, sent a letter today asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch to launch a Department of Justice probe into the state’s voter system. The request comes less than one month after an independent report by the state auditor general found flaws with the nine-year-old registration database.

The audit found the system at risk of a security breach, citing unauthorized access to voter data by Department of State employees. It also labeled the system overdue for upgrades and a disaster recovery plan evaluation.

Department of State officials said they have changed the system’s software and plan to train staff before voters prepare to cast their ballots in the 2016 elections.

This is one of several ways of hacking a voting system. Records could be altered, deleted, the system taken down, or simply fail. As we said, last month:

Just this week we understand that the Connecticut voter registration system was down for a day – a day when registrars were attempting to print party voter lists on the last legal day for party caucuses. This year the Legislature said that same system could be used for voters to register during Election Day Registration (EDR) – if we got used to relying on that system and it failed on its own or with a little help from hackers – in a large turnout election, it could result in long lines and turned away/turned off voters!

Unfortunately, we took a shot that was pretty close last month!

Last month, after a report of drone hacking, I speculated wildly, according to some:

My concern is that if cars can be hacked, why not police vehicles, especially, those armored military vehicles now in the hands of our local police?

“>Its even worse than we thought. A couple demonstrate graphically the hacking and controlling of a sniper rifle.

Last month, after a report of drone hacking, I speculated wildly, according to some:

My concern is that if cars can be hacked, why not police vehicles, especially, those armored military vehicles now in the hands of our local police?

“>Its even worse than we thought. A couple demonstrate graphically the hacking and controlling of a sniper rifle.

Top Six Ways Hackers Could (have) Disrupt(ed) an Election

The election system is particularly vulnerable because it involves a combination of state, local, and federal government agencies with their own systems, software, hardware, and security protocols. Often, government departments are running old “legacy” computer systems that are extremely vulnerable to malware and hacking; and even if they have new systems, these are often put into place without a comprehensive security audit and performance review.

Who exactly is in charge of securing these overlapping networks isn’t always clear in government either.

From the Huffington Post: Top Six Ways Hackers Could Disrupt an Election <read>

Our own headline emphasizes that we have no reason to believe that these risks only apply to future elections. There is no reason to believe that some or all have not been used in past elections. From the article:

Hacking just a few electoral districts could allow an attacker to swing an election in a close race. The U.S. has had close elections multiple times in the past. In 1960, John F. Kennedy squeaked out a victory over Richard Nixon by just 0.1%. In the 2000 presidential election, the decision came down to just a few votes in Florida. In the end, the Supreme Court had to determine the winner.

The election system is particularly vulnerable because it involves a combination of state, local, and federal government agencies with their own systems, software, hardware, and security protocols. Often, government departments are running old “legacy” computer systems that are extremely vulnerable to malware and hacking; and even if they have new systems, these are often put into place without a comprehensive security audit and performance review.

Who exactly is in charge of securing these overlapping networks isn’t always clear in government either…

According to Verizon’s 2015 Data Breach Investigations report, the public sector has the highest rate of “crimeware” infections of any industry sector…

If foreign governments can hack into U.S. government and defense systems, why would anyone think that foreign interests couldn’t also hack into U.S. elections? It’s important that we start talking about these risks because a “hack attack” could happen sooner than we think. Fixing this won’t be easy which is why we need to start preparing/safeguarding now!

The author lists his top six risks:

Hack a voting machine
Shut down the voting system or election agencies
Delete or change election records
Hijack a candidate’s website
Doxing a candidate
Target campaign donors

Just this week we understand that the Connecticut voter registration system was down for a day – a day when registrars were attempting to print party voter lists on the last legal day for party caucuses. This year the Legislature said that same system could be used for voters to register during Election Day Registration (EDR) – if we got used to relying on that system and it failed on its own or with a little help from hackers – in a large turnout election, it could result in long lines and turned away/turned off voters! In fact, that system is used today by officials on election day for EDR and for checking voter registrations when issues arise with the lists in pollbooks.

Another potential hack not mentioned would be attacking a local elections website. A hacker could change polling place locations, switch polling places and streets between polling places. Or simply knock out the web, preventing voters from obtaining polling place information on election day.

Of course, all these risks also apply, even more strongly to Internet voting where there are no paper backups to survive system failures, for audits, and for recounts.

Wisconsin’s One-Up Connecticut moment?

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wants to replace their election watch dog agency, apparently because it investigated his campaign.

Yet Wisconsin’s Governor may not be that far ahead of Connecticut’s. Like Wisconsin our watch dog agencies were joined and weakened several years ago by Governor Malloy to “cut costs”. How is that going for us? It seems that the Governor is not out to do away with them, yet there has been some questionable attacks, just as the watchdog is working on investigating the Governor’s last campaign,

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wants to replace their election watch dog agency, apparently because it investigated his campaign: Don’t replace Wisconsin’s elections watchdog agency <read>

On Monday, Gov. Scott Walker piled on with the other Republicans who are attacking the state Government Accountability Board, arguing that it should be replaced by something more accountable. The GAB is the nonpartisan state elections and ethics watchdog agency Republicans are mad at because it did its job and dared investigate Walker’s election campaign. What some of these Republicans really mean by “more accountable” is more subservient to their partisan interests. What these folks would love to do with this watchdog is pull all its teeth and keep it on a very short leash. The people of Wisconsin should tell their legislators that’s unacceptable, just as citizens did a couple of weeks ago when 12 GOP legislators tried to shut down public access to certain records.

To be sure, the GAB isn’t perfect, as an audit last year showed. But the answer is to fix the agency and give it the resources it needs to do its job, not shut it down and replace it with a group of partisans who would report to their masters in the Legislature, as some have suggested.

In arguing for replacement, Walker didn’t rule out the possibility that the judges now on the board would be replaced by partisan appointees in a replacement agency. “It’s appropriate to just get rid of it and replace it with something that’s ultimately accountable and fair to the people of the state of Wisconsin,” Walker said.

But Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) had the clearer vision on motive here: “Clearly they want to have not election watchdogs. They want to have election lap dogs,” Barca said.

The executive director of the State Elections Enforcement Commission has charged an appointee of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy with incompetence, as part of a festering controversy that began with the seizure of a computer from the commission’s office in early March…

Brandi also alleged that Brown has overreached her legal authority by trying to prevent the SEEC from re-hiring a key information-technology official who left the elections agency in 2014 after working there for seven years; the ex-employee soon sought to return by applying for a vacant position of IT manager, and Brandi wants to hire him…

The SEEC is currently investigating an allegation that Malloy’s 2014 re-election benefited from illegal funding through a state Democratic Party account intend
ed for candidates for federal office.

The Democratic Party has refused to comply with an SEEC investigative subpoena seeking documents that include communications between Malloy and top campaign aides. The SEEC recently voted to have the state attorney general go to Superior Court to enforce compliance with the subpoena, but no such action has yet been filed.

Statistician battles government to determine whether vote count is flawed

“Paper receipts are the obvious answer,Florida gave recounts a bad name. But there is something much worse than a recount: the utter inability to recount votes, and reconstruct voters’ true intent, in light of a serious computer error.”

Actually slightly worse and even more suspicious might be having paper ballots and being barred from using them to verify elections.

“Paper receipts are the obvious answer,” Ramasastry [associate professor at the University of Washington School of Law] said. “Florida gave recounts a bad name. But there is something much worse than a recount: the utter inability to recount votes, and reconstruct voters’ true intent, in light of a serious computer error.”

Actually slightly worse and even more suspicious might be having paper ballots and being barred from using them to verify elections.

A recent article in LJWorld.com [Lawrence Kansas] highlights the barriers put in front of a statistician looking to check election results by reviewing the paper record of the election: Kansas statistician battles government to determine whether vote count is flawed <read>

Wichita State University mathematician Beth Clarkson has seen enough odd patterns in some election returns that she thinks it’s time to check the accuracy of some Kansas voting machines.

She’s finding out government officials don’t make such testing easy to do.

When Clarkson initially decided to check the accuracy of voting machines, she thought the easy part would be getting the paper records produced by the machines, and the hard part would be conducting the audit. It’s turned out to be just the opposite.

“I really did not expect to have a lot of problems getting these (records),” Clarkson said. But Sedgwick County election officials “refused to allow the computer records to be part of a recount. They said that wasn’t allowed.”

Instead, Clarkson was told that in order to get the paper recordings of votes, she would have to go to court and fight for them…

Of course we are not in Kansas, we in Connecticut, where so far, nobody has gone to court and fully tested if ballots are actually public records open to public inspection. As we said in Myth #9

Myth #9 – If there is ever a concern we can always count the paper.

Reality

The law limits when the paper can be counted.

Audits can protect against error or fraud only if enough of the paper is counted and discrepancies in the vote are investigated and acted upon in time to impact the outcome of the election. See myths #1 and #2.

An automatic recanvass (recount) occurs when the winning vote margin is within 0.5%. The local Head Moderator moderator or the Secretary of the State can call for a recanvass, but even candidates must convince a court that there is sufficient reason for an actual recount.

Recounting by hand is not required by law. In early 2008 the Secretary of the State revised her policy of hand recanvasses. We now recanvass by optical scanner.

In 2010, the Citizen Recount showed huge discrepancies in Bridgeport, never recognized by the ‘system’.