CA: Uncertainty clouds future of e-vote tests

Uncertainty clouds future of e-vote tests

Despite movement toward new standards for machines, change may be years away

By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

SACRAMENTO

snip

Carnegie Mellon University computer expert Michael Shamos, a state voting-systems certification official for Pennsylvania, is one of the staunchest advocates for new, fully computerized electronic voting systems.

But judging by what he has seen emerge from secretive, private labs known as "independent testing authorities" and approved by the National Association of State Elections Directors, Shamos said, "There's stuff in there that's so horrible, I can't understand it."

He found a quarter of the voting systems presented to Pennsylvania unsuitable for elections, with such "glaring failures" as an inability to tally votes correctly. A recent study led by the University of Maryland showed all of six voting systems tested did not record 3 to 4 percent of the votes. What does pass state muster often can break down.

"I have good reason to believe that 10 percent of systems are failing on Election Day. That's an unbelievable number," Shamos told an assemblage of voting-system makers, elections officials and scientists. "Why are we not in an uproar about the failure of (touch-screen voting) systems?"

snip

Partly because of the testing and Diebold's own delays, a quarter of California's counties, including Alameda, Marin and San Joaquin, probably will miss Jan. 1 federal and state deadlines for offering new, handicapped-accessible voting machines with a paper record. Local elections officials want several months of lead time getting used to the new machines before the June primary.

"He's risking another huge meltdown for counties," said Los Angeles County Registrar Conny McCormack, head of the state association of local elections officials. "It's a setup for failure."

But the testing has disclosed security holes, as well as a bug that caused one in five Diebold touch screens to crash if a voter slid a finger on the screen, and forced Diebold to fix frequent paper jams in a printer for ballot records. Fixing the "sliding finger" bug alone cost the firm at least $250,000.

McPherson said this week that deadlines will have to take a back seat to making sure voting systems are secure, accurate and reliable.

"There is no compromise where election integrity is concerned," he said. "I cannot in good conscience certify systems that are not fully tested. This is a one-time show, and we're going to do it carefully."

http://www.insidebayarea.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=3268257

Diebold Gets Free Passes In Both California And North Carolina?

December 1st, 2005

snip

Meanwhile, it looks like Diebold is similarly getting preferential treatment in California as well. In this case, the Secretary of State originally invited some e-voting reform advocates to hack the Diebold machines. As we stated at the time, there are problems with this (putting the burden of proof on the hackers, rather than Diebold), but at least it suggested that the Secretary of State understood there were problems facing electronic voting.

However, having invited and confirmed that the group would be a part of this hack test, the Secretary of State proceeded to stop responding to emails and then deny that the event was happening when he had promised. He later made vague statements about maybe doing a test sometime in the future.

However, according to another site, instead of holding this hack test, it looks like the Secretary of State held a special summit on e-voting that apparently shut out many e-voting reform advocates, while stocking many panels with only supporters of existing e-voting machines. It sounds like a few reform advocates, such as Avi Rubin did attend -- so it wasn't entirely one-sided. However, it looks like the discussions were geared more towards listening to what the e-voting machine makers had to say, rather than what the reform advocates had to say. Reform advocates who tried to register were turned down, even though seats tickets were available.

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Update: On this California story, it was clear that the only report we saw was one sided -- put forth by those who were unable to attend. However, Joe Hall, who did attend, points out that the summit was much more balanced than the initial report suggested, and he felt that the important issues were raised. That's good news.

snip/links to related articles

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051201/1548203_F.shtml

This post is not factually correct...

by Joe on Friday, December 2nd, 2005 @ 03:30PM

http://josephhall.org/nqb2

Things have been understandibly confused lately so I can understand how techdirt -- normally of high-caliber -- might get things wrong.
Here are a few corrections:

* The initial date for the Diebold hack attempt was a target date and, like many things, was subject to change pending negotiation with the researcher in question and the vendor.

* The SoS's Voting System Testing Summit had been planned for this past Monday and Tuesday for many months ahead of time and was in no way a replacement for the hack test. I was there as were a slew of academics (Avi Rubin, David Dill, Mike Shamos, Michael Alvarez) and activists (Kim Alexander, Jerry Berkman and others).

* "stocking panels" was not what happened. There were specific panels for specific subjects. There was a panel to represent the state election officials, the testing authorities (of which only one showed up), the vendors, the academics, etc.

* The event was invite-only as it was a working event tailored to bring many perspectives to bear on a hard issue. It would have been great to have anyone attend... but, you can imagine that would have changed greatly the environment and people's willingness to come together and collaborate on reforming the system. I can assure you that the activist perspective was represented... maybe not the shrill, kill-them-all perspective, but definitely the "how do we move forward" perspective. (the event was recorded and will likely be up on the SoS's web site eventually)

* The post says, "However, it looks like the discussions were geared more towards listening to what the e-voting machine makers had to say, rather than what the reform advocates had to say." This is absolutely false. Out of 1.5 days, 1 hour was devoted to vendors and then we're lucky they came to answer our questions and we did give them tough ones.

* The mood was sooooo not "everything's OK." It was much more about how poor the current testing and certification system is in general and how many flaws get through either undetected or unfixed.

http://www.techdirt.com/commentSubmit.pl?sid=20051201/1548203&pid=204

I. In Focus This Week

Machine Approval Delays Could Make California Miss HAVA Deadline

Counties awaiting approval for Diebold touch screens could be six months late

By M. Mindy Moretti

electionline.org

As the deadline for complying with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) approaches in 30 days, California this week appears poised to join a growing number of states that seem almost certain to miss the mark.

snip

Despite a letter signed by a quarter of the state’s county elections officials urging the immediate approval of the machines, McPherson told reporters at a meeting earlier this week that he did not anticipate making any decisions before the end of the year.

snip

http://www.electionline.org/Newsletters/tabid/87/ctl/Detail/mid/643/xmid/165/xmfid/3/Default.aspx