By Elise Ackerman, San Jose Mercury News, May 30, 2004
Excerpts:
California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley had a simple question: Had a new electronic voting machine been approved by an independent testing lab?
State law requires such approval before the device could be used by California voters. It guaranteed the machines counted votes accurately and would work reliably during an election. As the state's top election official, Shelley figured he could get a quick answer.
He figured wrong.
Wyle Laboratories of El Segundo refused to discuss the status of its testing of the AccuVote-TSx machine made by its client, Diebold Election Systems. The information was proprietary, Wyle said, and could be revealed only to Diebold.
And so the secretary of state was introduced to the looking-glass world of voting-machine regulation. Over the years, repeated references to ``federal testing'' by election officials have given the impression that the government oversees the certification of touch-screen voting systems. While there are guidelines for the machines, no federal agency has legal authority to enforce them.
Instead, state officials rely on what amounts to a privately operated testing system -- a small group of for-profit companies overseen by a private elections group to ensure the integrity of elections increasingly dependent on electronic voting machines.
Neither the testing procedures nor the testing results are considered to be public information, and these testing laboratories have not traditionally been subject to direct oversight by election officials. For years, the testing system was managed by a private center that also accepted donations from voting-equipment manufacturers.
``I was shocked,'' Shelley recalled. ``Everyone seemed to be in bed with everyone else. You had these so-called independent testing authorities floating out there in an undefined pseudo-public, pseudo-private status whose source of income is the vendors themselves.''
Recent testing by states and university scientists has shown that these labs, called independent testing authorities, or ITAs, are signing off on some software with serious flaws.
------
Forty-two states, including California, rely on three independent testing labs to safeguard elections. By holding voting-equipment manufacturers accountable to national standards and keeping copies of software programs in escrow, the independent labs are supposed to help stop defective computer code from reaching the polling place.
But critics contend that the labs are too close to the elections industry to serve as effective watchdogs. ``The only thing they are independent from is state and federal regulators,'' Shelley told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission this month.
Dan Reeder, a spokesman for Wyle, which functioned as the nation's sole testing lab from 1994 to 1997, said the company's policy is to provide information to the manufacturers who are its customers.
``We would not even acknowledge who we have done business with because of the proprietary nature of the relationship,'' Reeder said. ``It's much like a lawyer-client relationship.''
-----
Only two independent labs test voting software: CIBER of Greenwood Village, Colo., and SysTest Labs of Denver. And only one, Wyle, tests the physical machinery.
SysTest Labs President Brian Phillips said the security risks identified by the outside scientists were not covered by standards published by the Federal Election Commission. ``So long as a system does not violate the requirements of the standards, it is OK,'' Phillips said.
Sunday, May 30, 2004
Saturday, May 29, 2004
Conny McCormack Q&A
By Andrew Gumbel, L.A. CityBeat, May 27, 2004
Excerpts:
As Los Angeles’ registrar-recorder, Conny McCormack is responsible for running elections in the most populous county in the United States, with more than four million registered voters and almost 5,000 precincts covering 88 cities, 100 school districts, and every conceivable ethnicity and language. This has made her an important national figure in the growing controversy over electronic voting systems.
------
McCormack spoke to CityBeat in response to our report that she had asked Diebold to make software changes in L.A. County for last October’s recall election without getting the changes certified. She offered no denial of the charge that she had circumvented the legal requirement for certification; when pressed on the issue, she ended the conversation.
–Andrew Gumbel
CityBeat: How do you respond to the charge by Kim Alexander of the California Voter Foundation that you put 40,000 votes at risk by asking Diebold to alter the software on the eve of the recall election?
Conny McCormack: That woman has absolutely no credentials in elections. It’s almost laughable. She says I put 40,000 votes at risk. I would never do that. I wouldn’t have a job if I did that.
Isn’t proper certification of election software an issue?
We have been using and patching software in L.A. County for over 30 years. Whenever changes are made, an incredible amount of testing is done – literally thousands of checks. Now, there have been infractions by all vendors, including in L.A. County. We have not been dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” to certify all the software. But it would be the biggest irony, to me, to have someone say that because we hadn’t done it by such-and-such a date we couldn’t do it. We saw a similar situation in Maryland when they had their primary on March 2. They wanted to put in some security enhancements which hadn’t gone through all of the testing labs, so they decided they were going to waive [the certification process], because it was more important to have the security enhancements than to have finalization of the process.
Excerpts:
As Los Angeles’ registrar-recorder, Conny McCormack is responsible for running elections in the most populous county in the United States, with more than four million registered voters and almost 5,000 precincts covering 88 cities, 100 school districts, and every conceivable ethnicity and language. This has made her an important national figure in the growing controversy over electronic voting systems.
------
McCormack spoke to CityBeat in response to our report that she had asked Diebold to make software changes in L.A. County for last October’s recall election without getting the changes certified. She offered no denial of the charge that she had circumvented the legal requirement for certification; when pressed on the issue, she ended the conversation.
–Andrew Gumbel
CityBeat: How do you respond to the charge by Kim Alexander of the California Voter Foundation that you put 40,000 votes at risk by asking Diebold to alter the software on the eve of the recall election?
Conny McCormack: That woman has absolutely no credentials in elections. It’s almost laughable. She says I put 40,000 votes at risk. I would never do that. I wouldn’t have a job if I did that.
Isn’t proper certification of election software an issue?
We have been using and patching software in L.A. County for over 30 years. Whenever changes are made, an incredible amount of testing is done – literally thousands of checks. Now, there have been infractions by all vendors, including in L.A. County. We have not been dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” to certify all the software. But it would be the biggest irony, to me, to have someone say that because we hadn’t done it by such-and-such a date we couldn’t do it. We saw a similar situation in Maryland when they had their primary on March 2. They wanted to put in some security enhancements which hadn’t gone through all of the testing labs, so they decided they were going to waive [the certification process], because it was more important to have the security enhancements than to have finalization of the process.
Making Votes Count: Who Tests Voting Machines?
New York Times editorial, May 30, 2004
Excerpts:
Whenever questions are raised about the reliability of electronic voting machines, election officials have a ready response: independent testing. There is nothing to worry about, they insist, because the software has been painstakingly reviewed by independent testing authorities to make sure it is accurate and honest, and then certified by state election officials. But this process is riddled with problems, including conflicts of interest and a disturbing lack of transparency.
-----
...there is, to begin with, a stunning lack of transparency surrounding this process. Voters have a right to know how voting machine testing is done. Testing companies disagree, routinely denying government officials and the public basic information. Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, could not get two companies testing his state's machines to answer even basic questions. One of them, Wyle Laboratories, refused to tell us anything about how it tests, or about its testers' credentials. "We don't discuss our voting machine work," said Dan Reeder, a Wyle spokesman.
Although they are called independent, these labs are selected and paid by the voting machine companies, not by the government. They can come under enormous pressure to do reviews quickly, and not to find problems, which slow things down and create additional costs. Brian Phillips, president of SysTest Labs, one of three companies that review voting machines, conceded, "There's going to be the risk of a conflict of interest when you are being paid by the vendor that you are qualifying product for."
------
If independent testing were taken seriously, there would be an absolute bar on using untested and uncertified software. But when it is expedient, manufacturers and election officials toss aside the rules without telling the voters. In California, a state audit found that voters in 17 counties cast votes last fall on machines with uncertified software. When Georgia's new voting machines were not working weeks before the 2002 election, uncertified software that was not approved by any laboratory was added to every machine in the state.
Excerpts:
Whenever questions are raised about the reliability of electronic voting machines, election officials have a ready response: independent testing. There is nothing to worry about, they insist, because the software has been painstakingly reviewed by independent testing authorities to make sure it is accurate and honest, and then certified by state election officials. But this process is riddled with problems, including conflicts of interest and a disturbing lack of transparency.
-----
...there is, to begin with, a stunning lack of transparency surrounding this process. Voters have a right to know how voting machine testing is done. Testing companies disagree, routinely denying government officials and the public basic information. Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, could not get two companies testing his state's machines to answer even basic questions. One of them, Wyle Laboratories, refused to tell us anything about how it tests, or about its testers' credentials. "We don't discuss our voting machine work," said Dan Reeder, a Wyle spokesman.
Although they are called independent, these labs are selected and paid by the voting machine companies, not by the government. They can come under enormous pressure to do reviews quickly, and not to find problems, which slow things down and create additional costs. Brian Phillips, president of SysTest Labs, one of three companies that review voting machines, conceded, "There's going to be the risk of a conflict of interest when you are being paid by the vendor that you are qualifying product for."
------
If independent testing were taken seriously, there would be an absolute bar on using untested and uncertified software. But when it is expedient, manufacturers and election officials toss aside the rules without telling the voters. In California, a state audit found that voters in 17 counties cast votes last fall on machines with uncertified software. When Georgia's new voting machines were not working weeks before the 2002 election, uncertified software that was not approved by any laboratory was added to every machine in the state.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Calif. Senate approves bill giving tighter deadline for e-voting paper trail
Associated Press, May 25, 2004
Excerpt:
Electronic voting machine manufacturers, already facing a July 1, 2005, deadline in California to make touch-screen machines that provide paper backup copies of votes, would face an even tighter deadline under a bill that passed the state Senate Tuesday.
The Senate voted 32-0 to move up the deadline by six months, to Jan. 1. After that date, cities or counties could not buy or use electronic machines that lack a paper printout of every vote.
The bill passed Tuesday would make voting machine makers print a paper backup copy on which voters could visually verify their electronic vote. Voters would not be able to take the copy with them.
Excerpt:
Electronic voting machine manufacturers, already facing a July 1, 2005, deadline in California to make touch-screen machines that provide paper backup copies of votes, would face an even tighter deadline under a bill that passed the state Senate Tuesday.
The Senate voted 32-0 to move up the deadline by six months, to Jan. 1. After that date, cities or counties could not buy or use electronic machines that lack a paper printout of every vote.
The bill passed Tuesday would make voting machine makers print a paper backup copy on which voters could visually verify their electronic vote. Voters would not be able to take the copy with them.
County dumps Diebold voting machines
By Ian Hoffman, Alameda Newspaper Group, May 26, 2004
Also see:
County dumps Diebold voting machines
By Warren Lutz, Fairfield Daily Republic, May 26, 2004
Yesterday the Solano County Board of supervisors voted to abandon its $4 million contract with Diebold and switch to an optical scan system from ES&S. Solano is one of several California counties impacted by Kevin Shelley's April 30 decertification order. Solano had purchased 1,171 Diebold TSX machines and used the equipment in the March election. Now that equipment will be sent back to Diebold, presumably to its McKinney, Texas facility.
We'll see in the upcoming days and weeks what Diebold's other California touchscreen counties plan to do. These counties include Alameda, San Diego, Kern, San Joaquin, and Plumas.
-----
Excerpt from Ian Hoffman's story:
Diebold lobbied Solano hard to keep its contract. The McKinney, Texas-based firm had offered a full optical-scanning system and printed ballots, all free, for the November election. Solano had its choice of keeping the system afterward or returning to use of the touch-screens if Diebold later got it certified to produce a paper, backup record that voters could check, known as a voter-verified paper trail.
Solano's new registrar of voters had recommended staying with Diebold's proposal as the least disruptive route through the November elections.
"They were very anxious to keep us as customers and were willing to spend almost any amount of money to keep us," said Solano registrar and chief information officer Ira Rosenthal.
On Tuesday, Solano County supervisors said no in a 3-1 vote and sent packing the nation's largest supplier of touch-screens and second largest supplier of voting systems.
"There was a confidence issue with the way Diebold conducted business with the county and the state in the past year," Rosenthal said.
------
Excerpt from Warren Lutz' story:
David Bear, a spokesman for the McKinney, Texas-based company, had no comment on the board's action.
"It would be hard for me to comment until I could review" the decision, Bear said.
The county also turned down Diebold's free offer to send more optical scanning equipment, whereby voters cast paper ballots, which are scanned electronically. Instead it chose similar equipment from Election Systems & Software, one of the finalists for the county's voting contract two years ago.
--------
Supervisor Duane Kromm, who sided against his colleagues, called their decision "a colossal blunder" and suggested the county may owe Diebold money.
"I think this is going to cost us a million bucks," Kromm said.
He added the county's election department has been unfairly "whipsawed" by the Diebold controversy. Four people have left the 10-person office since the March primary, including Registrar of Voters Laura Winslow.
Silva, who became a frequent critic of Diebold after the company's problems began making news last fall, didn't agree.
"I don't feel like we're whipsawing staff," Silva said. "This board has been whipsawed."
Also see:
County dumps Diebold voting machines
By Warren Lutz, Fairfield Daily Republic, May 26, 2004
Yesterday the Solano County Board of supervisors voted to abandon its $4 million contract with Diebold and switch to an optical scan system from ES&S. Solano is one of several California counties impacted by Kevin Shelley's April 30 decertification order. Solano had purchased 1,171 Diebold TSX machines and used the equipment in the March election. Now that equipment will be sent back to Diebold, presumably to its McKinney, Texas facility.
We'll see in the upcoming days and weeks what Diebold's other California touchscreen counties plan to do. These counties include Alameda, San Diego, Kern, San Joaquin, and Plumas.
-----
Excerpt from Ian Hoffman's story:
Diebold lobbied Solano hard to keep its contract. The McKinney, Texas-based firm had offered a full optical-scanning system and printed ballots, all free, for the November election. Solano had its choice of keeping the system afterward or returning to use of the touch-screens if Diebold later got it certified to produce a paper, backup record that voters could check, known as a voter-verified paper trail.
Solano's new registrar of voters had recommended staying with Diebold's proposal as the least disruptive route through the November elections.
"They were very anxious to keep us as customers and were willing to spend almost any amount of money to keep us," said Solano registrar and chief information officer Ira Rosenthal.
On Tuesday, Solano County supervisors said no in a 3-1 vote and sent packing the nation's largest supplier of touch-screens and second largest supplier of voting systems.
"There was a confidence issue with the way Diebold conducted business with the county and the state in the past year," Rosenthal said.
------
Excerpt from Warren Lutz' story:
David Bear, a spokesman for the McKinney, Texas-based company, had no comment on the board's action.
"It would be hard for me to comment until I could review" the decision, Bear said.
The county also turned down Diebold's free offer to send more optical scanning equipment, whereby voters cast paper ballots, which are scanned electronically. Instead it chose similar equipment from Election Systems & Software, one of the finalists for the county's voting contract two years ago.
--------
Supervisor Duane Kromm, who sided against his colleagues, called their decision "a colossal blunder" and suggested the county may owe Diebold money.
"I think this is going to cost us a million bucks," Kromm said.
He added the county's election department has been unfairly "whipsawed" by the Diebold controversy. Four people have left the 10-person office since the March primary, including Registrar of Voters Laura Winslow.
Silva, who became a frequent critic of Diebold after the company's problems began making news last fall, didn't agree.
"I don't feel like we're whipsawing staff," Silva said. "This board has been whipsawed."
Saturday, May 22, 2004
Demand Grows to Require Paper Trails for Electronic Votes
by Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times, May 23, 2004
Excerpts:
A coalition of computer scientists, voter groups and state officials, led by California's secretary of state, Kevin Shelley, is trying to force the makers of electronic voting machines to equip those machines with voter-verifiable paper trails.
------
Mr. Shelley said he was requiring counties to allow voters to vote on paper if they wanted to, even if there were no apparent problems with the touch screens. "It's a voter-confidence issue," he said in an interview. "It should be a no-brainer."
More than a dozen other states are considering legislation to require paper backups, and Congress, which had left the matter on the back burner, is considering several similar proposals.
"People are demanding this," said Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who has introduced a bill to require that by November, all voters be able to cast ballots that they can verify. This would entail either retrofitting touch screens with printers or requiring a county to go back to a paper-based system like optical-scan equipment or even punch cards.
------
"The Maryland primary was a very instructive learning experience for all activists," said Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Foundation, a grass-roots watchdog group in Sacramento that is helping to organize voter groups across the country.
"There are movements in a lot of states, and we're sharing information," she said. She said she took it as a mark of success that 75 percent of the voting jurisdictions in the country will be using the same equipment in November as they used in 2000.
"I'd rather have voters vote on punch cards than on an electronic system that can't be verified," she said.
Excerpts:
A coalition of computer scientists, voter groups and state officials, led by California's secretary of state, Kevin Shelley, is trying to force the makers of electronic voting machines to equip those machines with voter-verifiable paper trails.
------
Mr. Shelley said he was requiring counties to allow voters to vote on paper if they wanted to, even if there were no apparent problems with the touch screens. "It's a voter-confidence issue," he said in an interview. "It should be a no-brainer."
More than a dozen other states are considering legislation to require paper backups, and Congress, which had left the matter on the back burner, is considering several similar proposals.
"People are demanding this," said Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who has introduced a bill to require that by November, all voters be able to cast ballots that they can verify. This would entail either retrofitting touch screens with printers or requiring a county to go back to a paper-based system like optical-scan equipment or even punch cards.
------
"The Maryland primary was a very instructive learning experience for all activists," said Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Foundation, a grass-roots watchdog group in Sacramento that is helping to organize voter groups across the country.
"There are movements in a lot of states, and we're sharing information," she said. She said she took it as a mark of success that 75 percent of the voting jurisdictions in the country will be using the same equipment in November as they used in 2000.
"I'd rather have voters vote on punch cards than on an electronic system that can't be verified," she said.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
A view from Texas about California and Hart Intercivic
The E-Vote Backlash Grows
By Lee Nichols, the Austin Chronicle, May 14, 2004
Excerpt:
Despite having a major contract with Orange Co., Hart InterCivic (whose eSlate system is also used here in Travis Co.) does not expect much immediate impact to its business from Shelley's decision. Hart spokeswoman Michelle Shafer told us that its sale to Orange Co. is already final, so now its responsibility is just to "work with them to provide whatever assistance we can so their voters can vote. We're working through the different scenarios" to meet the 23 security conditions. She said Hart will not be providing the voter-verifiable option to Orange Co.
Monday, May 17, 2004
Electronic Voting Vulnerable To Hacking
Click2Houston.com, May 15, 2004
On Wednesday, the California Senate Elections Committee hold a hearing to investigate the e-voting problems in Orange County, CA with the county's new electronic voting system from Hart Intercivic.
Here's a story from Harris County, Texas, that also uses the Hart eSlate machines, that discusses concerns from computer scientist Dan Wallach that the eSlate system could be hacked. The story also features a video.
Excerpts:
Is Harris County gambling with your vote? Are electronic voting machines used here and across the county an open invitation to election fraud?
According to Rice University professor and often-quoted critic of electronic voting Dan Wallach, e-voting leaves too much to chance.
"Elections could be stolen," Wallach said. "The question is not, 'Can I hack the eSlate machine?' The question is, 'How hard is it to hack?.'"
On the other side of the issue is Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman. The chief election official says electronic voting machines are even more secure than the older paper-ballot system.
"I'm not interested in a lot of hypothetical theory that the academics are working with," Kaufman said. "Someone is not going to meddle with the process without there being readily available evidence of it."
However, Wallach says that is just not true and that electronic machines easily be hacked without leaving any evidence.
To prove his point, Wallach put his computer science students to work setting up a mock electronic voting system -- one that mimics the eSlate system used in Harris County. One group of students was assigned to hack and corrupt the system; the other group was assigned to catch them.
During the class, the hackers successfully tampered with the machines without leaving a trace 50 percent of the time.
" I actually thought most people would find the hacks. When I saw they only found four of the eight, that was really scary," Rice University graduate student Anwis Das said.
In class, each undetected hack could have changed the outcome of the mock election, according to Wallach.
"In the systems being used here in Harris County and elsewhere in the United States, there's no reason that they wouldn't be vulnerable to the same problems," Wallach said.
Beverly Kaufman says there is no way an outsider can tap into the system electronically and says no one inside would do it if they could.
"If something unusual were to happen with my voting system for an election, I think the first place I would ask the district attorney to look are those people that keep predicting dire circumstances," Kaufman said. " We don't have a desire or the ability to go in and change the logic that is built into these systems."
On Wednesday, the California Senate Elections Committee hold a hearing to investigate the e-voting problems in Orange County, CA with the county's new electronic voting system from Hart Intercivic.
Here's a story from Harris County, Texas, that also uses the Hart eSlate machines, that discusses concerns from computer scientist Dan Wallach that the eSlate system could be hacked. The story also features a video.
Excerpts:
Is Harris County gambling with your vote? Are electronic voting machines used here and across the county an open invitation to election fraud?
According to Rice University professor and often-quoted critic of electronic voting Dan Wallach, e-voting leaves too much to chance.
"Elections could be stolen," Wallach said. "The question is not, 'Can I hack the eSlate machine?' The question is, 'How hard is it to hack?.'"
On the other side of the issue is Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman. The chief election official says electronic voting machines are even more secure than the older paper-ballot system.
"I'm not interested in a lot of hypothetical theory that the academics are working with," Kaufman said. "Someone is not going to meddle with the process without there being readily available evidence of it."
However, Wallach says that is just not true and that electronic machines easily be hacked without leaving any evidence.
To prove his point, Wallach put his computer science students to work setting up a mock electronic voting system -- one that mimics the eSlate system used in Harris County. One group of students was assigned to hack and corrupt the system; the other group was assigned to catch them.
During the class, the hackers successfully tampered with the machines without leaving a trace 50 percent of the time.
" I actually thought most people would find the hacks. When I saw they only found four of the eight, that was really scary," Rice University graduate student Anwis Das said.
In class, each undetected hack could have changed the outcome of the mock election, according to Wallach.
"In the systems being used here in Harris County and elsewhere in the United States, there's no reason that they wouldn't be vulnerable to the same problems," Wallach said.
Beverly Kaufman says there is no way an outsider can tap into the system electronically and says no one inside would do it if they could.
"If something unusual were to happen with my voting system for an election, I think the first place I would ask the district attorney to look are those people that keep predicting dire circumstances," Kaufman said. " We don't have a desire or the ability to go in and change the logic that is built into these systems."
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