California Restricts Voting Machines

NY Times ^ | August 5, 2007 | CHRISTOPHER DREW

[amchugh]

California’s top election official on Friday decertified three voting systems widely used in the state but said she would let counties use the machines in February’s presidential primary if extra security precautions were taken.

The official, Debra Bowen, the secretary of state, said she made the decision in response to studies showing that the machines could be hacked.

[amchugh]

Finally! It's about time someone had enough sense to do this.

[mountn man]

How long before Jesse and Al scream racism, disenfranchisment, and demand absentee voting...with no type of Id verification or voter registration required.

[ConservativeofColor]

Give democrats cigarettes and they’ll vote anywhere, anytime and often.

[PetroniDE]

I find it interesting that the will let these “hackable” machines be used for the primaries. Can’t have democrats in an election without fraud (even in their own primary).

BTW — Any machine is hackable if you try hard enough. Guess we have to ban voting by their logic.

[SatinDoll]

Her actions are illogical. If voting machines are hackable and therefore can cause election fraud then what about all the paper ballots used in fraudulent elections due to hands-on interference! The best way to handle an election is computer voting machines with paper ballots run in tandem; it’s the only way to keep everyone honest. If the talleys are far too different, someone is playing crooked.

[supercat]

I am bewildered at the failure to protect against fundamental vulnerabilities, even when solutions are not difficult.

1. Problem: If a machine has a writable code store, it’s possible for illegitimate code to perform just about any function, and then later overwrite itself with a copy of the legitimate code thus leaving little or no trace of its existence.

   Solution: Require that machines be constructed to only run code from flash or OTP cartridges which cannot be altered while they are inside the machine, and whose contents can be inspected without running any code stored thereon.

2. Problem: Machines with built-in locks are subject to key compromise.

   Solution: Rather than having locks built into the machines, construct them with places to attach padlocks, such that all padlocks must be removed for access. Each interested party then supplies its own lock. No party need entrust any other party with its keys.

3. Problem: Vote storage media could be altered after the election.

   Solution: Construct the vote storage media with a highly visible write-protect mechanism. After the election, election judges confirm that the mechanisms are engaged as soon as the media are removed from the machines; members of each party then use their own media readers to copy the election results, and supply each other with digital signatures thereof.

I don’t see any need for particularly fancy equipment. Something like an 8032 should be just fine. Somewhat higher end processors might allow for prettier graphics, but maintaining code/data separation might be a little more tricky. Though even if hardware doesn't physically separate code and data storages, running from a read-only code store would be loads better than running from a writable one (though in the absense of protection a buffer overrun could cause code to jump into a writable area).

[coloradan]

Are they going to restrict it to legal residents, or something?

[BfloGuy]

I don’t see any need for particularly fancy equipment. Something like an 8032 should be just fine. Somewhat higher end processors might allow for prettier graphics, but maintaining code/data separation might be a little more tricky. Though even if hardware doesn't physically separate code and data storages, running from a read-only code store would be loads better than running from a writable one (though in the absense of protection a buffer overrun could cause code to jump into a writable area).

You've got to be kidding. Gimme a piece of paper and a member of each party at the polling site. It's worked for centuries.

[supercat]

You've got to be kidding. Gimme a piece of paper and a member of each party at the polling site. It's worked for centuries.

Computers, if properly used, could offer better fraud resistance than paper. After all, while paper ballots have been used for centuries, I'm sure paper-ballot cheating has been around nearly as long.

My personal preference would be to have votes recorded on machine-readable paper ballots, with voters given the option of either marking ballots using a pen or else using a data-entry terminal that would output a validly-printed ballot. Voters would be required to either mark every office (each office would have a "no candidate selected" option) or else have a mark indicating how many offices were not marked. A voter who didn't know how to count could leave that part blank initially and insert the ballot into the counter; the counter would reject the ballot but indicate the proper mark to apply. This procedure would prevent anyone from adding votes to the ballot after it was cast. Further, if the counting machine was designed to refuse anything other than a cleanly-cast ballot, the appearance of spoiled ballots in the votestream would be a strong indication of funny business.

Of course, all the protections in the world will be meaningless if nobody's willing to do anything when fraud is detected. And in some places (Washington state, anyone?) that's a bigger problem than voting technology.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Dr. Lott wrote an excellent column on voting machines a while ago. The data stored in these machines can't be altered, and the machines are not connected to any external network.

People are Luddites, that's all it is.

[supercat]

The data stored in these machines can't be altered...

The data on which machines can't be altered?

Many existing voting machine designs have a number of fundamental security flaws.

[Tex Pete]

Requiring voters to be registered and have ID would be the first steps to preventing voter fraud. Of course, the dems aren’t really concerned about that.

[colorado tanker]

Finally! It's about time someone had enough sense to do this.

Be careful what you ask for. The reason Dem officials are doing this is that paper ballots are much easier to commit fraud with than votes preserved in these electronic systems. Remember their M.O. - keep "finding" and counting votes until the Dem wins.

[Sergio]

Funny how the Democrats cry loud and long about “vote fraud”. The only time they cry louder and longer is when anyone tries to fix the issue.

[SatinDoll]

You know, that’s what I thougt. I believe the Democrats are scared, frightened they won’t be able to commit election fraud anymore.

[Lizavetta]

Funny how the Democrats cry loud and long about “vote fraud”.

But NOT the kind of vote fraud that occurs when no ID is required to vote. THAT kind of vote fraud is cool with them.