Madison Capital Times: "Is your vote being counted?"
madison.com
4/13/2005 12:28 pm
Is your vote being counted?
When we cast our vote, none of us really questions whether it will be counted. We assume our votes will be fairly cast for the candidates we selected. But, is that a fair assumption? What could go wrong?
Nationwide about 80% of ballots cast in the 2004 election were on electronic machines produced by two major companies (Diebold and ES&S) led by two brothers. There are a number of problems that could occur with these machines that could cause the votes to be mis-counted.
Software or Hardware Glitches
In the 2004 presidential elections there were dozens of reports of touch-screen votes being cast for the wrong candidate. In almost all of these reports, the voters reported touching "Kerry" on the screen, with the screen returning a message the vote was cast for Bush. Poll workers reported this type of thing had happened before and the machines needed to be "re-calibrated".
Under-votes and over-votes were also problems across the country. In one Florida precinct, poll workers reported over 800 people had voted by 5 p.m. At the end of the day, only 535 votes were counted. In Ohio, President Bush had received 4,258 votes in a precinct with only 638 voters. It was later determined the software had malfunctioned and given the President 3,893 extra votes.
This is not only a problem with e-voting machines. Software glitches have been found in the central tabulator of optical scanning equipment similar to the machines used in 87% of Wisconsin communities. In one Florida community, all of the absentee ballots were fed through a single machine. Election workers noticed the count started going backwards at one point. This is because a programmer had added code several years before to start counting backwards when the vote count reached 32,500. How many machines across the country had this happen without detection?
Hacking Into the Central Tabulator
Black Box Voting is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that audits election results and tests the security of voting systems. Check out the results of their test from less than two months ago: "In mid-February, Black Box Voting, together with computer experts and videographers, under the supervision of appropriate officials, proved that a real Diebold system can be hacked. This was not theoretical or a "potential" vulnerability. Votes were hacked on a real system in a real location using the actual setup used on Election Day, Nov. 2, 2004. In February, we were allowed to try various hacking techniques into a real election system. To our surprise, the method used in our October simulation did not work. However, another method did work. The hack that did work was unsophisticated enough that many high school students would be able to achieve it. This hack altered the election by 100,000 votes, leaving no trace at all in the central tabulator program. It did not appear in any audit log. The hack could have been executed in the November 2004 election by just one person.
This hack stunned the officials who were observing the test. It calls into question the results of as many as 40 million votes in 30 states. We are awaiting the response of the House Judiciary Committee to this new development for their investigation."
Intentional Programming of Software to Rig Elections
In Florida, a computer programmer named Clint Curtis has made the allegation he was directed to add code to a vote counting program to cause votes to switch from one candidate to another. Here's a link to the story. I'm not making any statement here as to whether his allegations are true or false because the investigation is ongoing. The question is whether this could be true, or if we have controls in place to prevent this. I don't see anything that would prevent this from happening, particularly since voting companies refuse to provide their source code under the guise of "trade secrets".
There are many advantages to use of electronic machines. Think of the problems we are avoiding related to punch cards. No one wants to go back to pregnant and hanging "chads". Electronic machines are also more accessible for the disabled. However, the potential for mistakes and fraud are unmistakable. We need a complete review of the potential problems from start to finish along with solutions to "plug the holes" in the system. Federal standards for maintaining controls in the system are also needed.
Josef Stalin is attributed with saying "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." Let's do what we can to control the vote counting so the results reflect the will of the people who cast the votes.
ENDS |
