Caught Between The Glitches and The Gotyas

We have been covering a significant report by VotersUnite.org, Vendors are Undermining the Structure of U.S. Elections. , the report summarizes the bind Connecticut and other states are in:

Violations of Federal Law Leave States in a Double Bind. The federal government fails to meet its HAVA deadlines for giving guidance to the states on how to comply with HAVA, yet states are held accountable to comply.

News from Florida of our vendor, Diebold Premier continues to reveal the disappointing quality of their products and the Federal testing programs. From the Harold Tribune a short sour story <read>

Two Diebold glitches in one month? That’s no way to rebuild confidence in automated elections.

Sarasota and Hillsborough counties experienced one of the problems Tuesday night. They suffered delays from a software flaw that revealed itself when officials tried to integrate absentee ballot totals into overall election results…

The manufacturer is Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold — a name long connected to doubts about the security of voting.

Earlier this month, Premier accepted blame for the other glitch — a coding error that can sometimes prevent precinct vote totals from electronically transferring to central tabulation systems. The problem could afflict 34 states.

Good news, bad news

The good news about these flaws is that faulty counts can be detected by cross-checks and refuted by a paper trail of ballots. The votes still exist, in other words, though they can be harder to find.

The bad news is that confidence has been shaken, yet again, in automation that is critical to democratic elections. The extra vigilance required to thwart these potential glitches adds to election administrators’ burden and cost.

The fact that the Premier problems occur intermittently, undiscovered during certification or testing procedures, is especially troubling. In Sarasota County, for example, the high-speed scanner/software glitch did not surface in a mock election held last month…

Despite many reforms since the 2000 fiasco, voting systems are nowhere near as credible, secure or user-friendly as they should be.

Here is the good news and bad news for Connecticut:

The good news is that these latest glitches do not apply here because we total results manually from election night paper tapes, rather than accumulating memory cards.

The bad news is we are totally dependent on Premier and their distributor, LHS, for our elections – they are rightfully in the spotlight and being sued for poor quality and generally remain in denial. The lack of security and poor quality of the AccuVote-OS has been proven by independent scientific studies commissioned by CT, CA, and OH.

Moderate good news is that Connecticut has chosen optical scan which is the best system available which meets standards set by the Help America Vote Act.

The bad bad news is that there is no alternative in sight. All the vendors have poor products with no better products or vendors in sight. While some states are improving their laws, procedures, and actions, proposed Federal laws in the Senate would “fix” the Help America Vote Act by making the situation much worse.

The Outsourced State

Last week we covered a significant report by VotersUnite.org, Vendors are Undermining the Structure of U.S. Elections. The report describes the multiple ways that states have become dependent on vendors for elections, how Federal laws and actions have placed election officials in an impossible bind, how arrogant vendors take advantage of the situation, that elections are at risk, and democracy in peril. It also highlights some states that are completely dependent on vendors for almost every phase of every election.

Looking at Connecticut, we outsource less than the states that are highlighted in the VotersUnite report. You could conclude that we are much better off, our elections much less at risk. You might be wrong.

The VotersUnite report uses the theme of outsourcing being a tunnel that undermines elections. Here are the major outsourced elements covered by the report. Like most states, Connecticut does not outsource them all (here we cross out those not completely outsourced by Connecticut):

  • Equipment
  • Software
  • Installation
  • Training/Troubleshooting
  • Ballot Programming
  • Pre-Election Testing
  • Maintenance/Repairs
  • Election Day Assistance
  • Results Retrieval
  • Trouble Shooting/Investigation
  • Recount Management

We prefer a different theme: “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link(s)”.

Two of these elements represent a significant risk to Connecticut elections:

  1. Ballot Programming – Before each election memory cards are programmed by a vendor, LHS Associates, in Massachusetts, by people over which we have no supervision.
  2. Maintenance/Repairs – Over this last summer each of our optical scanners was subject to mandatory maintenance planned and performed by LHS Associates.

This summer’s maintenance was to be performed under the observation of election officials but not the public – how hard would it be for a busy, untrained, non-technical election official to look away for a few seconds while a scanner was open, giving the vendor time to replace the permanent program chip in the machine with one with the same external label but with a rogue program inside? What guarantee is there that the original chip had the approved program when the scanners were originally delivered?

“Oh” you say, “this is so far fetched and local officials perform pre-election testing before each election.”

A recent paper by the University of Connecticut clearly demonstrates the ways in which clever coding in the permanent memory of our AccuVote-OS optical scanners can defeat pre-election testing. The report title almost says it all: Tampering with Special Purpose Trusted Computing Devices: A Case Study in Optical Scan E-Voting <read>

Also a memory card test by UConn commissioned by the Secretary of the State surprisingly revealed that less than half of local election officials were able to fully follow pre-election testing procedures.

Reports by UConn and those commissioned by the Secretaries of State of CA and OH also demonstrate the risks of the memory cards and their vulnerability to insiders.

The companies we keep:

Recall that our State’s chief election official incorrectly believes that LHS invented the AccuVote-OS

via Outsourcing: Democracy is Lost

A report this week from VotersUnite.org describes the devastating damage caused by outsourcing our elections and giving over complete control to vendors:

Vendors are Undermining the Structure of U.S. Elections
A VotersUnite report on the current situation and
how to reclaim elecitons — in 2008 and beyond

The report comes with an Executive Summary
A fourty page Full Report
And a Lou Dobbs video interview with the author

This report is sad, devastating, important, and very readable. You can and should read the whole report. The summary or a few quotes cannot do it justice. Here are a few quotes to encourage you to read the entire report:

As we approach the 2008 general election, the structure of elections in the United States – once reliant on local representatives accountable to the public – has become almost wholly dependent on large corporations, which are not accountable to the public. Most local officials charged with running elections are now unable to administer elections without the equipment, services, and trade-secret software of a small number of corporations.

If the vendors withdrew their support for elections now, our election structure would collapse. However, some states and localities are recognizing the threat that vendor-dependency poses to elections. They are using ingenuity and determination to begin reversing the direction…

Such dependency has allowed vendors to:

  • Coerce election officials into risk-riddled agreements, as occurred in Angelina County, Texas in May 2008.
  • Endanger election officials’ ability to comply with federal court orders, as occurred in Nassau County, New York in July 2008.
  • Escape criminal penalties for knowingly violating state laws and causing election debacles,
    as occurred in San Diego, California in 2004.

Analysis of the impact of laws and decisions at all levels of government demonstrates that lawmakers and officials have facilitated the dependence of local elections on private corporations. This report explores:

  • How the mandates of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) and the inaction of the federal government left the states and localities with nowhere to turn but to the vendors.
  • How state laws, passed by ill-informed representatives, limited the options of local officials to the voting systems developed by big corporations.

Voting system vendors’ contracts, communications, and histories explored in this report reveal that vendors exploit the local jurisdictions’ dependency by charging exorbitant fees, violating laws and ethics, exerting proprietary control over the machinery of elections, and disclaiming unaccountability…

Continue reading “via Outsourcing: Democracy is Lost”

In Memoriam: Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones

She was the leader in moving that the 2004 vote be examined by congress.

Here she is in “Help America Vote…On Paper” (about 4min 40sec in and 8min20 sec) <video>

This whole video is also a good 18 minute primer on electronic voting issues: The risks of electronic voting, the perils of outsourcing, the advantages of optical scan, the need for optical scan audits, and the taxpayer costs.

Official Statement: Continue reading “In Memoriam: Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones”

Secretary Bysiewicz Orders Expanded Post-Election Audit

Update: 8/20
Checking with Dr. Shvartsman about the Secretary’s “98% or 99% probability”, he said:

Indeed, 10% sample from the population of about 800, counting all CT districts, gives about the same statistical result as 33% sample from the population of about 250, counting only the districts involved in the August primary…there is no inference of any kind to be made about adequacy/inadequacy of the 10% sample. The recommendation was based purely on the basis of the population size being reduced from about 800 to about 250.

In general I agree with Dr. Shvartsman. If we were auditing one race over any reasonable number of districts, then what is important is the sample size so 10% x 800 = 80 and 33% x 250 = 83.

For instance, if we want to do a poll of Connecticut and New York voters, if we sample 1000 voters in each state, the resulting confidence is about the same, even though the number of voters in each state is very different.

And given the nature of Connecticut’s audit law and the interaction of the 10% district selection followed by the random selection of races, it is a wholly different calculation.

Further what the Secretary of the State seemed to be claiming had to do with a proof that the machines were working properly, which is a whole different situation – hard to even define given the nature of the audit.

*************
Original Post:
Secretary more than triples legislature’s 10% audit mandate for primary, 82 districts in 33 towns to be audited.

Along with several advocates, I participated in the post-election audit drawing this morning. Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz indicated they were “advised by Dr. Shvartsman of UConn” with such a small number of districts that this larger sample would provide “98% or 99% probability” that the machines functioned properly. She also reiterated that the November 2007 post-election audits showed that the machines performed “extremely accurately and securely” the only errors were those of voters filling out ballots incorrectly – We dispute that.

In general I am pleased to learn that the Secretary of the State sees that the current audit law is inadequate and that statistics should play a role in determining the level of post-election audits. On the other hand, I would spend additional and existing post-election auditing/recounting resources in ways that would provide higher levels of confidence more efficiently and effectively. These mechanisms as articulated in our petition include:

  • Variable audits by race, based on the number of districts and originally reported margin (i.e. much lower audit levels for races such as the biggest one in this election, the 4th congressional district primary with a margin over 70%)
  • Dropping the exemption of districts with recounted races from the audits
  • Dropping the exemption of centrally counted absentee ballots from the audits
  • Re-instituting hand-counts for close elections – the Secretary supported them for two elections, but now has gone back to machine recounting – one race in this election in New Britain was won by three votes, such races should be recounted by hand (as of this point we have not verified if this election was recounted by hand or was recounted by machine)
  • Dropping the exemption from the audit of counting ballots that were originally counted by hand – we support auditing all ballots – if the November 2007 audits proved anything, they proved election officials do not have confidence in their ability to count ballots by hand accurately without independent verification;
  • And with a chain-of-custody we can trust, registrars can follow, and that is enforceable.

The Secretary also indicated that this audit would prove that the machines were ready for the November election. Once again, CTVotersCount respectfully disagrees: The memory cards are programmed before each election so one post-election audit is limited in its ability to provide insight into the integrity of another election; This may help verify that the machines generally perform well and may not have been compromised by the mandatory vendor (LHS) maintenance performed on the machines this summer; However, as we have said and UConn reports have shown the machines can be programmed to change results based on all sorts of criteria. This makes real the Computer Science reality that any test cannot be conclusive.

Speaking of UConn and the Secretary of the State’s office, we continue to await the promised memory cards test reports from the February Primary and the legally mandated post-election audit reports from that same primary. So far we must go with the Coalition reports for that primary which indicate that due to procedural lapses the value of those audits remain questionable.

We half agree with the Secretary’s statement today:

“Auditing election results isn’t just a good idea, it’s absolutely essential in order to guarantee the integrity of our elections,” said Secretary Bysiewicz. “As Connecticut prepares for perhaps its highest turnout election in a generation, it is important voters have faith that their vote will be recorded accurately and that’s why the independent audits are so vital.”

Yet, we would prefer to have “confidence” rather than “faith” that everyone’s vote will be recorded accurately.

List of towns and districts:
Continue reading “Secretary Bysiewicz Orders Expanded Post-Election Audit”

Times: Blames the Messinger

We have been complementary of late of the New York Times Editorials that have gotten it right: Nailed Problems With Federal Bill, Three Lessons Learned, and Strongly Favoring Post-Election Audits.

However a story on Saturday gets it wrong and blames the Election Assistance Commission for being slow in approving voting machines – but the problem is that the vendors are not supplying products that are acceptable <read>

Flaws in voting machines used by millions of people will not be fixed in time for the presidential election because of a government backlog in testing the machines’ hardware and software, officials say.

The flaws, which have cast doubt on the ability of some machines to provide a consistent and reliable vote count, were supposed to be addressed by the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency that oversees voting. But commission officials say they will not be able to certify that flawed machines are repaired by the November election, or provide software fixes or upgrades, because of a backlog at the testing laboratories the commission uses.

“We simply are not going to sacrifice the integrity of the certification process for expediency,” said Rosemary E. Rodriguez, the chairwoman of the commission.

Thanks to John Gideon for articulating the details in the flawed products and the flawed article: <read>

The New York Times has again given a platform to the voting machine vendors to voice their displeasure with a system that is forcing them to actually provide voting systems that are fully tested and certified. The vendors, and some election officials, seem to want to continue the old system of poorly tested and rubber-stamped voting systems counting our votes…

If Diebold/Premier had not presented a voting system that had 79 flaws found during testing and 2 of those being fatal flaws, they might have one of their newer systems certified right now. All of the vendors seem to be having the same issues. Product certification testing is not supposed to be a system of doing alpha and beta testing for the vendors, yet that is what is clearly happening…

The fact is, as Urbina reports, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has “said the current system left states on their own to discover voting machine problems. The report calls for Congress to revise the Help America Vote Act and provide the commission with the authority and resources it needs to resolve problems with machines that were certified before the commission took over the process.”

EVEREST Reports Devistating

Earlier I had promised more on the USENIX/ACCURATE Conference in San Jose. In addition to the panels, the presentations on the Ohio EVEREST studies provided information that we have not covered here at CTVotersCount.org. Released in mid December, following the California Top-To-Bottom review the Ohio reports have gotten less attention by many, including me. Two presentations on EVEREST at the conference grabbed my attention – they not only confirmed the CA reports but added additional vulnerabilities and devastating conclusions.

Links:
Ohio One Page EVEREST Summary
Ohio Secretary of the State’s Executive Report
USENIX Hart and Premier [Diebold] Paper
USENIX ES&S Paper
HOPE Conf ES&S Video Presentation

From the Ohio Secretary of State’s summary:

Ohio’s electronic voting systems have “critical security failures” which could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State, according to a review of the systems commissioned by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

“The results underscore the need for a fundamental change in the structure of Ohio’s election system to ensure ballot and voting system security while still making voting convenient and accessible to all Ohio voters, “ Secretary Brunner said Friday in unveiling the report…

“To put it in every-day terms, the tools needed to compromise an accurate vote count could be as simple as tampering with the paper audit trail connector or using a magnet and a personal digital assistant,” Brunner said.

(Note: Since Connecticut uses Premier [Diebold] equipment that report’s findings are most relevant. Note, however, that all the findings do not apply to Premier and that Connecticut uses a subset of their products – yet all the findings indicate the state of the industry, our vendor, and the general qualities and security of our electronic election equipment.)

From the Hart/Premier report:

As in previous studies, we found the election systems to be critically flawed in ways that are practically and easily exploitable. Such exploits could effect election results, prevent legitimate votes from being cast, or simply cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election itself. In this

effort we identified new areas of concern including novel exploitable failures of software and election data integrity protection and the discovery of dangerous hidden software features…

there were several important failures detailed by this study that were not known prior to the release of this study. Several important discoveries include:
Continue reading “EVEREST Reports Devistating”

Election Fraud In Bridgeport?

Update 6 /17/2009: Head of CA GOP Voter Registration Firm Pleads Guilty to Voter Registration Fraud
Update: 10/07/2008: Election Enforcement Commission investigation opened
Update: Secretary Bysiewicz Responds

(Without editorial comment, see Editor’s Note)

Update 6 /17/2009: Head of CA GOP Voter Registration Firm Pleads Guilty to Voter Registration Fraud <read>

Update: 10/07/2008: Election Enforcement Commission investigation opened <read>

Update: Secretary Bysiewicz Responds: <read>

“Voter fraud is an allegation that my office takes very seriously. The only state agency that can investigate potential voter fraud, however, is the State Elections Enforcement Commission. In fact, the Office of the Secretary of the State has consistently instructed local Registrars of Voters that if they see any voter registration cards that raise red flags or do not look correct, they should make photocopies for their own records and send the problematic cards to the State Elections Enforcement Commission for investigation. If anyone feels there is enough evidence to warrant an investigation, I would urge them to file a Complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Commission. ACORN has informed our office that there were indeed problems with voter registration cards being filled out improperly or incorrectly in Bridgeport and in fact those cards were not counted. This case proves the system works. Locally elected Registrars of Voters are trained statewide to detect discrepancies or inconsistencies in information provided on voter registration cards.?

As CTVotersCount.org readers know there are a lot of questionable practices and issues with the conduct of elections and post-election audits in Bridgeport which are the responsibility of the city’s Registrars and their election officials. <read> <read>.

Now issues of external fraud are being to be raised by one of the Bridgeport Registrars and the Republican Party Chair is calling for an investigation. We suggest watching the video. and reading the article

HARTFORD In the wake of a recent interview posted on the website ElectionJournal.org (www.electionjournal.org) with Bridgeport Republican Registrar of Voters Joe Borges, Chairman Chris Healy is calling for Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz to launch a full investigation into the activities of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN). “There should be no room for playing games with elections in Connecticut,” said Healy, the Chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party. “The allegations of voter registration fraud by ACORN should be fully investigated, and if any crimes are uncovered, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.?

According to the interview, which is now posted on the CTGOP blog The Everyday Republican, Bridgeport Republican Registrar of Voters Joseph Borges indicated that “at least 20%” of the voter registration cards ACORN had submitted were duplicative or falsified. Mr. Borges even told of one instance where an ACORN employee had solicited voter registration cards under the guise of “job employment applications”.

Election Costs $ – Democracy? Priceless!

We have said that conducting elections cost from $5.00 to $20.00 per ballot cast and that our estimate of $0.20 to $0.50 for an audit is a small price to pay to assure that the votes are counted as the voters intended. But the news from Norwalk indicates we may need to revise the high-end cost of running an election upwards from that $20.00. <read>

“Everybody has their right to have a primary, but they should consider the costs and if they really statistically have a chance to win,” said Betty Bondi, Democratic registrar of voters in Norwalk, where 6.3 percent of registered Democrats voted.

Bondi said the primary will cost Norwalk taxpayers about $50,000 by the time the bills get sorted – all that for a contest in which Himes got 899 votes and Whitnum got 70

The calculation is $50,000 / (899 + 70) = $51.59 per ballot cast to run the election, totally dwarfing the cost of a strong, effective post-election audit.

A story earlier this week highlighted complaints of high barriers by third-party candidates. Today’s article features complaints from election officials of barriers being too low for primary challengers.

We cannot help but agree with one comment from Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz:

Lopsided results and low turnouts must be put in perspective, Bysiewicz said.

“Sometimes democracy costs money,” she said

We would add that the costs of the peoples’ intention not being followed can be trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, no matter how you look at it, Red, Blue or Green. The value of Democracy? Priceless!

New York – Test/Think Before You Buy

New York has an extensive testing and review program to test voting machines before they purchase them. Of course that means, given the information we have from various reports in California, Ohio, and Connecticut, its quite predictable that none will pass reasonable tests and review <read>


New York State’s new voting systems are failing certification testing. The two systems undergoing testing for use in 2009 are showing large numbers of defects against New York requirements, have as yet unresolved design and manufacturing issues, and during the initial stages of my source code review I found a software back door that would allow a rogue program to load from an inserted memory card. What’s not to like?

Now, you may be thinking that these all sound like bad things. And of course, on one level they absolutely are. As I’ve written about in earlier posts, what gall vendors have providing New York’s voters with such flawed equipment, sold at astronomical prices, and which have apparently not undergone basic quality assurance testing before being shipped. So what’s the good news? The good news is that we’re identifying problems prior to use in an election – the machines are failing New York’s tests.

Unlike the situation in so many other states, where inadequately tested machines are approved by private companies working for system vendors with no independent review, New York State has changed the rules of the game. Here, we require rigorous testing to the highest standards. Here, we have independent review of not only the machine vendors, but of the vendor performing the testing. Here, we have a Citizens Advisory Committee which has access to the systems and provides advice and analysis to the State Board. Because of this, New York State will not use these machines until such time as they meet the standards required by law and regulation. In other words, the process is working.

Read the full report for more details.