Damning Report On US Voting Machines

Princeton and Lehigh University researchers have finally been allowed to release the findings of their analysis of the Sequoia (formally Diebold) AVC Advantage voting machines that are used in many states in the US. The report reveals a sorry list of security problems that allow miscreants to disenfranchise voters.

Here is the executive summary that was released with the report.

I. The AVC Advantage 9.00 is easily "hacked" by the installation of fraudulent firmware. This is done by prying just one ROM chip from its socket and pushing a new one in, or by replacement of the Z80 processor chip. We have demonstrated that this ``hack'' takes just 7 minutes to perform.

The fraudulent firmware can steal votes during an election, just as its criminal designer programs it to do. The fraud cannot practically be detected. There is no paper audit trail on this machine; all electronic records of the votes are under control of the firmware, which can manipulate them all simultaneously.

II. Without even touching a single AVC Advantage, an attacker can install fraudulent firmware into many AVC Advantage machines by viral propagation through audio-ballot cartridges. The virus can steal the votes of blind voters, can cause AVC Advantages in targeted precincts to fail to operate; or can cause WinEDS software to tally votes inaccurately. (WinEDS is the program, sold by Sequoia, that each County's Board of Elections uses to add up votes from all the different precincts.)

III. Design flaws in the user interface of the AVC Advantage disenfranchise voters, or violate voter privacy, by causing votes not to be counted, and by allowing pollworkers to commit fraud.

IV. AVC Advantage Results Cartridges can be easily manipulated to change votes, after the polls are closed but before results from different precincts are cumulated together.

V. Sequoia's sloppy software practices can lead to error and insecurity. Wyle's Independent Testing Authority (ITA) reports are not rigorous, and are inadequate to detect security vulnerabilities. Programming errors that slip through these processes can miscount votes and permit fraud.

VI. Anomalies noticed by County Clerks in the New Jersey 2008 Presidential Primary were caused by two different programming errors on the part of Sequoia, and had the effect of disenfranchising voters.

VII. The AVC Advantage has been produced in many versions. The fact that one version may have been examined for certification does not give grounds for confidence in the security and accuracy of a different version. New Jersey should not use any version of the AVC Advantage that it has not actually examined with the assistance of skilled computer-security experts.

VIII. The AVC Advantage is too insecure to use in New Jersey. New Jersey should immediately implement the 2005 law passed by the Legislature, requiring an individual voter-verified record of each vote cast, by adopting precinct-count optical-scan voting equipment.

See here for the blog of one of the people who produced the report.

"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc, in the run up to the 2004 US election. more

End Of America - The Movie

The movie adaptation of Naomi Wolf's book by the same name opened at a New York film festival yesterday. Apparently, the tape was delayed in traffic for an hour which prompted an impromptu round table discussion between Naomi Wolf, Alec Baldwin and Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union. Somebody called Karina Longworth was there and she recorded and transcribed the discussion. You can read it at her blog here

The DVD will be released in January, assuming that President Palin doesn't declare it as a Weapon of Mass Instruction and have the producers locked up as Enemy Combatants that is.

The American Flag

Did you know that there are actually two official US flags? One is the military flag and the other is the civilian flag. The military flag is flown during times of war while the civilian flag is flown during times of peace.



Can you tell which is which?

Take a look here to find out.