Ever since the hanging chad and botched elections of 2000, there’s been a push to move to a newer, fancier, more high-tech electronic voting system that would eliminate the problems faced in that election. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Easier to count, data logs with accountability, and all sorts of fancy computerized goodies.
Unfortunately, as is often the case, the reality looks to be falling far short of what is actually needed. New Zealand’s Scoop magazine has a very disturbing article examining Diebold’s electronic voting machines, and investigating just how secure they really are. It’s not good news.
The GEMS election file contains more than one “set of books.” They are hidden from the person running the GEMS program, but you can see them if you go into Microsoft Access.
You might look at it like this: Suppose you have votes on paper ballots, and you pile all the paper ballots in room one. Then, you make a copy of all the ballots and put the stack of copies in room 2.
You then leave the door open to room 2, so that people can come in and out, replacing some of the votes in the stack with their own.
You could have some sort of security device that would tell you if any of the copies of votes in room 2 have been changed, but you opt not to.
Now, suppose you want to count the votes. Should you count them from room 1 (original votes)? Or should you count them from room 2, where they may or may not be the same as room 1? What Diebold chose to do in the files we examined was to count the votes from “room2.”
There’s a lot more in the article, none of it encouraging. A new frontier for voting? Or just more ways to botch up the system? I’m afraid it looks like the latter to me.
(via Lambert)