Fri 24 Feb 2006
The Black Box Voting site has released initial findings from their study of the logs from the Sequoia brand touch-screen voting machines used in Palm Beach, FL, in the 2004 Presidential election. The results? Around 100,000 errors on the 40 machines they used.
100,000 errors on 40 machines.
In one county.
In one election.
(UPDATE: Five minutes after posting this I was convinced I’d misread it. I went back and checked. Nope! 100,000 errors on 40 machines. Just check out all those zeroes after that one. That’s a lot of zeroes. My head is still spinning.)
Some of the highlights from the report include:
- “several dozen voting machines with votes for the Nov. 2, 2004 election cast on dates like Oct. 16, 15, 19, 13, 25, 28 2004 and one tape dated in 2010″ (they report that machine-assignment logs indicate these balloting machines were not used for any early voting periods)
- “1,475 voting system calibrations were performed while the polls were open, providing documentation to substantiate reports from citizens indicating the wrong candidate was selected when they tried to vote” (yes, they had to open them up, mess around with the guts and then close them back up in the middle of election day, nearly a thousand and a half times)
- “[voting machine] logs rule out the possibility that these were Logic & Accuracy (L&A) test results, and verified that these results did appear in the final totals”
Here’s one of my favorite quotes:
Many of these machines showed unexplained log activity after the L&A test but before Election Day. In addition, many more machines without date anomalies showed this log activity, which revealed someone powering up the machine, opening the program, then powering it down again. In one instance, the date discrepancy appeared when someone accessed the machine two minutes after the L&A test was completed.
Voting machines are computers, and computers have batteries that can cause date and time discrepancies, but it does not appear that these particular discrepancies could have been caused by battery problems.
The evidence indicates that someone accessed the computers after the L&A and before the election, and that this access caused a change in the machine’s reporting functions, at least for date and time. Such access would take a high degree of inside access. It is not known whether any other changes were introduced into the voting machines at this time. As learned in the Hursti experiments, it is possible for an insider to access the machines and leave no trace, but sometimes a hasty or clumsy access (such as forgetting to enter a correct date/time value when altering a record) will leave telltale tracks.
Of course, when they asked the IT supervisor for the county elections board to name who had access to the machines, or whether they could set up a day to test the machines themselves, they say “the IT person, Jeff Darter, remained silent and never answered the question.”
Welcome to the 21st Century, folks. Want to vote? Don’t bother. It’s already taken care of.
If the whole idea of ~100,000 anomolies and errors in one county bothers you, or the idea of electronic voting with no paper trail and zero accountability bothers you – and they should – then consider doing something to help these folks out: NC VOTER, a grassroots group advocating for verified voting and against paperless electronic voting. I’ve talked to them at various things (Carrboro Day, for example) and they’re good peeps. If you’re in another state, look for a group there. This is a huge deal that I think a lot of people think doesn’t matter since it “fixes” the whole issue of butterfly ballots; the fact is, yeah, something may be getting “fixed” alright, but it’s not what we think.
Okay, totally off-topic – I remembered where I’d met Richard before. It was at the Reservoir, with Andy and Josh. Duhr. I think it was even the Garmonbozia show.
Anyway, on-topic. Thanks for posting that, because I had no idea it was *that bad*. But how exactly do they get away with that? Do people just not care? And if so, how do people not care? GRR.
Awesome!
How do they get away with it? Nobody cares. Local election officials feel powerless because the law says they have to use machines that have certain capabilities (touch-screens, for instance), and their county or their state signs a contract and so they get what they get. When they try to raise a fuss over a machine being buggy, being easy to hack, being whatever, the law is not on their side. The law says they have to have these machines now. If they don’t use the machines, the makers are not the ones who’ll go to the clink, it’s the officials. They are entirely and utterly powerless.
The makers of the voting machines don’t give a shit, frankly, because nobody is going to make them. Every elections board in the country has to buy from a tiny handful of makers. There’s not a lot of competition to pressure them to improve, and the politicians at the top are all in their pockets anyway. In 2004, the CEO of Diebold was the head of Bush’s campaign in Ohio and promised that he would “deliver the state of Ohio to George Bush.” No elected official is going to punish someone who can deliver on that sort of promise.
If you look at the top of the heirarchies – those of the makers and that of the government – the folks at the top are all in bed with each other. If you look down the heirarchies to people who might have the principles to care, you find local officials whose hands are tied and mouths are gagged. On the corporate side, you’ve got engineers at the bottom who are pressured to put a product out on the market ASA-fuckin’-P because Palm Beach County needs a machine to pass their logic & accuracy “test,” for what those tests tend to be worth in the first place, and they need three dozen machines in the warehouse by next Friday. If they want to care, great, but they haven’t got time.
And that, I might add, is the best case scenario: the one in which the engineers are only pressured to produce a product as quickly as possible. Throw in a screaming District Manager who says the machines might need to count twice every other or every fourth or every twenty-fifth Republican vote – Bush’s margin in the popular vote – just to make sure he can deliver on his boss’ promise to one politician or another, and you’ve got a whole new kettle of fish.
So why don’t Ma and Pa Kettle care? Because they don’t understand the technology, or they assume that someone else is keeping an eye on it for them, or whatever. My parents are intelligent, educated people who have travelled the world and seen plenty and they would never think to question a touch-screen, computerized balloting machine. It just wouldn’t occur to them. In fact, because it is so much more convenient, they would welcome it with open arms.
Well, thanks for breaking it down for me.
If I can ask a(nother) personal question, do you vote? Do you think there’s any point? I’ve always voted, I guess mainly just in case there was a point to it. Greg’s always been firmly in the “don’t even bother” camp, although I’ve dragged him to the polls – but now I’m wondering why bother voting, when it’s all so fucking crooked.
And now I’m going to stare at kittens and baby otters or some shit and try not to fume.
Oh, I absolutely vote. The last time I didn’t vote in a federal election was 1994, and Newt Gingrich came to power. I’m never not voting again.
Here is some happy news: you and I don’t use these machines. Not yet, anyway. And when we do, I think pressure will have mounted sufficiently that there will at least be more awareness of the problem if not an actual fix yet. Besides, if no one votes because it’s pointless, how will we know to dispute the results?
If nothing else, remember this: the Republican party always benefits, and has always benefited, from low turn-out. Part of the reason I think Republicans are especially gung-ho about voting machines with all their faults – I honestly do think this, which may say more about my paranoia and pessimism than anything else – is that they hope it’s just another thing to keep the folks who are smart enough to care home on election day. I am not willing to hand them that victory.
Okay, cool.
Because the, uh, hopeless optimist in me was all like, “But, we should still go vote, because…it’s voting, and it’s supposed to work, and…” Hee. Now I can frame my voting as “low turn-out benefitting the Republicans” and sound less naive.