Artifact Eight

Songini, Marc L. "Concerns about fraud potential continue to plague users of electronic voting machines: report says flaws must be fixed for upcoming votes.(NEWS)." Computerworld 40.27 (July 3, 2006): 7(1). Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. Centennial High School (MD). 23 Jan. 2007
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This article brought up some research that was not conducted by the Johns Hopkins University students. The research that this article was on was set up by the Brennan Center to examine the possible flaws.

Larry Norden, chairman of the task force and an attorney at the Brennan Center, said that over the past several years, half of all manual voting systems in the U.S. have been replaced with electronic devices. Elections officials cite the need to meet the requirements of various federal laws and the need for improved accuracy in installing the systems. He also said "we've not necessarily adapted our [security] procedures to that new technology."

This research has found some 120 threats to the voting system and that they have no systems in place to detect software attacks. "This nonpartisan report ... confirms what many of us have believed for years: Electronic machines are all vulnerable to error or manipulation that could change the outcome of elections," said Rep. Rush Holt.

Artifact Seven

"Security Researchers Discover Flaws in E-Voting System.(Brief Article)." Communications Today 9.136 (July 28, 2003): 0. Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. Centennial High School (MD). 23 Jan. 2007
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This brief article talks about how Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is calling for the "immediate passage of e-voting legislation to prevent election fraud." The are also "strongly pushing a bill authored by Rep. Rush Holt...the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (HR 2239), that would require open-source software and voter-verifiable paper audit trails for all new e-voting machines.

This article also sights the research of Johns Hopkins University and Rice University students. They also made it clear that (EFF) is a company that is for the growth of electronic voting but they are not willing to push their cause to take away one of the basic rights of the United States citizens and that the system "isn't ready for the prime time."

Artifact Six

Mitchell, Robert L. "The e-voting blame game.(flaws in electronic voting machines)(Column)." Computerworld 40.43 (Oct 23, 2006): 38(1). Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. Centennial High School (MD). 23 Jan. 2007
&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T003&prodId=IPS&docId=A154335487&source=gale&srcprod=SRCG&userGroupName=elli29753&version=1.0>.

This document was strange because it took a different view point on the subject they said that they didn't feel as if this was normal individuals that were out trying to sabotage an election as much as is it was the people in charge of running the elections trying to sway the election. I wouldn't say that this is completely out of the question because on November 2nd I was helping campaign at a local school and the election official came out and smoked a cigarette and talked to us about our candidates view points.

This article much more recent then the other articles written in 2006 says "While some of the problems associated with e-voting are technology-based, many simply amount to a lack of best practices. For example, e-voting machines initially didn't generate paper records, so Diebold now includes a thermal printer. The printed summary, viewable through a window, reassures the voter and provides a paper-based alternative that officials can use to verify the electronic tabulations. But the Election Science Institute, in reviewing a Maryland election, worried that paper jams or printer malfunctions could cause "profound" problems. The advocacy group suggested extensive training of poll workers."

This of course would cost the states more money which would possibly could amount to many cutbacks for explain maybe the would have to lower the amount of polling places available to the voters to use or perhaps they wouldn't be able to afford to upgrade the systems. This article also states "Training is clearly necessary. Some officials don't even have the most basic procedures down. During a recent Maryland election, officials in one county failed to deliver to the polls the access cards voters needed to operate e-voting machines. In another county, officials couldn't operate e-voting machines because they didn't have their passwords..."

A ground breaking thing that I read in this article was the sometimes days before elections voting systems are distributed to election officials homes several days before the elections for what the author called a "sleepover". This opportunity to be around the systems for a long period of time could allow almost anyone to tamper with the system.

Artifact Five

Boyle, Alan " E-voting flaws risk ballot fraud." 2003. 24 July 2003 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077251/

This article also mentions the revolutionary work on Johns Hopkins researchers that I mentioned earlier. This article says that these researchers were able to exploit these flaws using a code that was stolen from the Diebold headquarters which Diebold claimed that the software was "outdated and never was used in an actual election."

“Common voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal,” this is what was determined by the research that the 4 men were involved in. Apparently the code that the researchers used came from a New Zealand based website that they claimed they downloaded from the internet from an unprotected Diebold site.

Diebold also says the consistently update the software to stay in compliance with requirements set forth. Sadly for Diebold the researchers said that software would have to be completely rebuilt to fill the gaping holes in this system. “The stuff that we looked at is not something from which you could evolve a secure system,” “We found vulnerabilities everywhere we looked,” “A 15-year-old computer enthusiast could make these counterfeit cards in a garage and sell them,” “Then even an ordinary voter, without knowing anything about computer code, could cast more than one vote for a candidate at a polling place that uses this electronic voting system.”said Avi Rubin one of the researchers.

Artifact Four

Epstein, Edward. "Boxer wants new voting machines to give receipts; Bill is among a flurry of proposals prompted by fears over security of electronic systems.(NEWS)." San Francisco Chronicle. (Dec 12, 2003): A10. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Thomson Gale. Centennial High School (MD). 11 Jan. 2007 http://find.galegroup.com/ovrc/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T004&prodId=OVRC&docId=CJ111181917&source=gale&srcprod=OVRC&userGroupName=elli29753&version=1.0.

Senator Barbara Boxer was quoted as saying she would propose a law requiring all states with counties that use such computerized touch-screen systems to provide voters with a paper receipt -- and do it by next November's presidential election. Unfortunately something must have come up between then and now because since then two elections (one presidential) Nothing like this had come about. I personally think that this is a perfect idea. When you walk out of the poling area they could provide with paper shredders so you could destroy your receipt and no one could know how you voted. This would just be another way of making sure that you are n0t leaving the poling place worrying if your vote was cast for the person you wanted it to go for.

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley became the first elected official to order poling places to provide receipts. Unfortunately his order will only cover the state of California but hopefully other states will follow his ideas if the 2006 elections work out well in California.

Senator Boxers proposal was sparked by the many proposals in Congress to deal with the rise of electronic voting. After a multibillion dollar law was past to prevent problems like those in Florida in the 2000 which marked end of the punch card voting era.This has been a hot button topic in politics and has been an issue often discussed by the Democrats, but is now a topic being discussed by the Republicans also.

Artifact Three

"Security Of E-Voting Systems Seriously Questioned; Computer researchers claim to have found 'critical flaws' in software used for U.S. electronic voting.(Diebold Election Systems)." InformationWeek (July 24, 2003): NA. Student Resource Center - Gold. Thomson Gale. Centennial High School (MD). 20 Dec. 2006 http://find.galegroup.com/ips/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T003&prodId=IPS&docId=A105829596&source=gale&srcprod=SRCG&userGroupName=elli29753&version=1.0.

"Three computer researchers from the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, with help from a computer scientist at Rice University, say they've uncovered vulnerabilities in the software purportedly used by Diebold Election Systems. As a result, one person can cast multiple votes, elections can be delayed, the anonymity of voters can be breached, and cast votes can be modified or even deleted, the researchers say." Later in the article it followed this statement later on by saying, "a 15-year-old computer enthusiast could make counterfeit smart cards that the system would accept as legitimate." As a computer enthusiast I find this information shocking that someone with basic computer skills could change the out come of and election if they felt the need.

This article also brings up the fact of how even after these flaws were exposed Maryland payed 56.6 million dollars for 11,000 Diebold touch screen systems. These were the same voting systems that have been bashed due to their security flaws. "A few months ago we didn't know what was going on inside these machines because no one would tell us, says David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University. Dill says he hopes the research will shed light on potential security problems with electronic voting. There are election officials that just don't want to hear about the potential security problems. They won't listen." David Dill has often been quoted in articles about voting flaws.

Did Maryland make a smart deal spending a record 56.6 million on these systems?

Hacking Democracy (Artifact Two)

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hackingdemocracy/synopsis.html HACKING DEMOCRACY was directed by Simon Ardizzone and Russell Michaels; produced by Simon Ardizzone, Robert Carrillo Cohen and Russell Michaels; executive producers, Earl Katz, Sarah Teale and Sian Edwards; edited by Sasha Zik. For HBO: supervising producer, John Hoffman; executive producer, Sheila Nevins.

This movie is a recent documentary on HBO after watching this movie I decided to dive further into this topic and this movie really was my inspiration to do this. "In the 2000 presidential election, an electronic voting machine recorded minus 16,022 votes for Al Gore in Volusia County, Fla. While fraud was never proven, the faulty tally alerted computer scientists, politicians and everyday citizens to the very real possibility of computer hacking during elections." This is one of the many interesting fact that they brought up during this documentary. They also went into Florida Central Office and found out in one of the poling area Bush had received minus votes also.

Bev Harris after asking some voting officials about some of the information on some of the touch screen when the refused to answer her question she decided to find out for herself. "In the course of her research, which unearthed hundreds of reported incidents of mishandled voting information, Harris stumbled across an "online library" of the Diebold Corporation, discovering a treasure trove of information about the inner-workings of the company's voting system." Bev Harris a normal citizen with no real computer experience was able to find this very classified information.

"Harris brought this proprietary "secret" information to computer security expert Dr. Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University, who determined that the software lacked the necessary security features to prevent tampering. Her subsequent investigation took her from the trash cans of Texas to the secretary of state of California and finally to Florida, where a "mini-election" to test the vulnerability of the memory cards used in electronic voting produced alarming results." These systems with such huge gaps in security are the ones that are used a crossed thousands of counties and a crossed 32 states. David Dill a computer science professor at Stanford University said ""lots of people involved in writing the software, and lots of people who could have touched the software before it went into that machine. If one of those people put something malicious in the software and it's distributed to all the machines, then that one person could be responsible for changing tens of thousands of votes, maybe even hundreds of thousands, across the country."

"Ultimately, Bev Harris' research proved that the top-secret computerized systems counting the votes in America's public elections are not only fallible, but also vulnerable to undetectable hacking, from local school board contests to the presidential race. With the electronic voting machines of three companies - Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia - collectively responsible for around 80 percent of America's votes today, the stakes for democracy are high. " This flaw is huge flaw and now no one knows how they will do it but voters and candidates alike are ready to see what will happen in 2008.

Now I ask you and myself....

Do you think that by 2008 we will have a system that will be flawless for the election?

If not when do you think that they will have a flawless system?