Red Rag

For some strange reason, American officials have decided to implement technology that would eliminate all physical evidence of a person’s vote. It doesn’t take a genius to see the problems this might cause, and slowly but surely those problems are emerging.

Exhibit A:

Digital voting giant Diebold Election Systems took a staggering blow Wednesday as California officials reported that Diebold ran uncertified — and in some cases untested — software in all 17 counties where it counted votes in the state’s last two elections.

What began as a scandal in Alameda County swept statewide as every county served by Diebold realized its software was not state certified, and three counties, including Los Angeles, found that some of their software never had been tested by a federally designated lab.

Marin and San Joaquin counties both used non-state-certified software. Marin also was using a different version of vote counting software than Diebold officials reported to the state, and San Joaquin was using different touchscreen software than the company reported.

In other words, an election was conducted despite the State not knowing how the software operated. This could have resulted in countless problems. For instance, a system crash may have prevented people from voting, or subsequently destroyed all record of people’s votes.

Don’t dismiss that possibility too quickly:

Auditors couldn’t examine eight machines in various counties because they failed to boot up when turned on. Another 12 machines were in the Diebold plant in McKinney, Texas, being repaired.

As if that wasn’t enough, California has run into problems trying to bring its systems up to scratch: it doesn’t even know which versions of the software have been certified, and it looks like they’re about to implement a version that hasn’t:

To bring all 17 counties into line with current software versions, the state plans to update all GEMS to version 1.18.18. Panel chairman Kyle said this probably could be accomplished in a week. Four counties already have it installed on servers.

However, there is conflicting information about whether 1.18.18 has been certified by federal authorities. Tony Miller, head of special projects in the voting division, said he believed the system was qualified in July, but had conflicting reports about whether or not it had been certified by the National Association of State Election Directors. The state has not been able to uncover any documents that indicate this was done.

Shawn Southworth, who qualifies voting software for independent testing authority Ciber, told Wired News last week at a conference in Maryland that the software has not yet been certified federally.

This is quite disturbing. The State has certification requirements, but can’t tell which versions of the software it is using — or even which versions it is supposed to use.

Exhibit B (via The Mad Prophet):

Voter advocate Bev Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of Diebold, one of the country’s largest voting equipment vendors, included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records.

The programmer, Jeffrey Dean, wrote and maintained proprietary code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes as senior vice president of Global Election Systems, or GES. Diebold purchased GES in January 2002.

According to a public court document released before GES hired him, Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that “involved a high degree of sophistication and planning.”

So — much of the software used by Diebold (the company that installed unverified software on Californian voting machines) was written by a man with a conviction for falsifying computer records. Without a receipt or other independently verifiable record, there is no saying what might happen to people’s votes between touching the screen and being counted by the computer.

What does the industry think about these concerns?

The industry insists that its systems are secure and trustworthy, with or without paper. Harris Miller, who leads a new trade association for the industry, said that the group had no position in favor or against paper trails, but dismissed the issue as a “theological debate within the academic community.” Miller called some opponents of electronic voting “black helicopter theorists” and Luddites who “want to go back to the bad old days” of stuffed ballot boxes and chad wars.

A theological debate? The bad old days of actually being able to verify election results?

Frankly the US authorities should take a leaf out of Australia’s book. We have been using a very sophisticated piece of election technology for many, many years: the humble pencil. It is easy to use. It rarely malfunctions, and when it does it’s simple to fix and cheap to replace. It might take time to count the ballots, but at least people can be sure their vote has not been lost or tampered with.

To those readers who are older or have better memories than I: When was the last time Australia had a major electoral controversy that centred on the method of recording the votes?