Technology is a two edged sword. Technology can grant enormous power to the wielder. But dependence on technology, and the unintended consequences I talked about, can be an achilles heel. A voting machine can be a good thing and a bad thing. Let’s not kid ourselves though. Technology is already involved in the voting process. It’s in the optical scanners and the card readers. But what is causing a ruckus is that we are moving to a completely computerized voting process. And that has already caused some major problems.
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“In Fairfax County, VA, in 2003, a programming error in the electronic voting machines caused them to mysteriously subtract 100 votes from one particular candidates’ totals.
In San Bernardino County, CA in 2001, a programming error caused the computer to look for votes in the wrong portion of the ballot in 33 local elections, which meant that no votes registered on those ballots for that election. A recount was done by hand.
In Volusia County, FL in 2000, an electronic voting machine gave Al Gore a final vote count of negative 16,022 votes.
The 2003 election in Boone County, IA, had the electronic vote-counting equipment showing that more than 140,000 votes had been cast in the Nov. 4 municipal elections. The county has only 50,000 residents and less than half of them were eligible to vote in this election.”
Quote by Bruce Schneier - ps, if you haven’t read Bruce’s blog, you really should! As Schneier states, computer bugs, complexity, etc. can have serious errors. And those errors can occur with a single candidate. That means that the problem or error won’t effect everyone - and that’s the sort of problem you don’t want. But the past issues don’t end there.
The Scoop wrote up an excellent expose from author Bev Harris, in the wake of the last election. Here is a brief excerpt from Rob, a technician who worked on the Diebold machines. I think this illustrates the gravity of the situation:
‘Harris: “So what is your opinion about the certification testing?”
Behler: “No, it’s not just that. NOBODY even tested it! When I found that out — I mean you can’t not test a fix — I worked for a billing company, and if I’d put a fix on that wasn’t tested I’d have gotten FIRED! You have to make sure whatever fix you did didn’t break something else. But they didn’t even TEST the fixes before they told us to install them.
“Look, we’re doing this and 50-60 percent of the machines are still freezing up! Turn it on, get one result. Turn it off and next time you turn it on you get a different result. Six times, you’d get six different results.”‘
That’s not very comforting. And I was shocked to learn that they had actually dialed out to remote servers for software updates. That makes me really nervous. I would have thought that segregating these machines from a broader network would be a primary concern.
So the machines in and of themselves have been riddled with bugs and accuracy issues. But that’s not the most unnerving issue with voting machines. And it’s not, in my humble opinion, the outside hacker that we need to be gravely concerned about. I think the most troubling aspect of the whole mess is the inside game. What keeps politicians from developing relationships with these computer voting companies? That is very hard to track. In fact, the Hill published a stunning article regarding Senator Hagel of Nebraska (R). Senator Hagel owned $1-$5 M in financial holdings in the McCarthy Group, “a private merchant banking company.” This is what the Hill found:
“ES&S is a subsidiary of McCarthy Group Inc., which is jointly held by the holding firm and the Omaha World-Herald Co., which publishes the state’s largest newspaper. The voting machine company makes sophisticated optical scan and touch-screen vote-counting devices that many states have begun buying in recent years.
An official at Nebraska’s Election Administration estimated that ES&S machines tallied 85 percent of the votes cast in Hagel’s 2002 and 1996 election races.
In 1996, ES&S operated as American Information Systems Inc. (AIS). The company became ES&S after merging with Business Records Corp. in 1997.”
Hagel didn’t report the underlying holding in the McCarthy Group. And this comes off as a blatant cover up. And how is this for understatement?
“In a disclosure form filed in 1996, covering the previous year, Hagel, then a Senate candidate, did not report that he was still chairman of AIS for the first 10 weeks of the year, as he was required to do.
Hagel’s ties to ES&S go beyond his financial stake. He served as its chairman when it was named AIS from the early ‘90s until March of 1995. He also was an investor in AIS Investors Inc. until the beginning of 1995, McCarthy said.
Hagel also served as president of McCarthy & Co, the financial advisory group, from July of 1992 until the beginning of 1996.
Campaign finance reports show that McCarthy has served as treasurer for Hagel for Nebraska and later Hagel for Senate from 1999 until as recently as December of 2002.
McCarthy’s son, Kevin, works in Hagel’s press shop.
Hagel’s unrecorded stake in the voting systems company poses an apparent conflict of interest on election reform issues.”
This is the type of thing that scares me the most. It is the deal made in the back room, with large amounts of money. In any effect, the debate is going to continue. Follow this link to read a quick list of pros and cons of voting machines. You may also wish to check out BlackBoxVoting.org. They are “the official consumer protection group for elections, funded by citizen donations.”
[tags]voting machine, electronic voting machine, diebold voting machine, computer voting, blackboxvoting, Bev Harris[/tags]
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