HBO: Hacking Democracy's Epitaph

Last night I watched the HBO Documentary "Hacking Democracy" and found it fascinating, if somewhat well worn territory (for myself and Dkossers).

The film follows Bev Harris of Black Box Voting as she originally began to take up the cause of Verified Voting in 2001 and continues through the decertification of Diebold by California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley and verification by Leon Country Election Supervisor Ion Sancho that the results of electronic tabulators can be untracably altered via their memory cards.

But there's more to this story. Much more...

A Review of Hacking Democracy from the New York Times.

TV Review | 'Hacking Democracy'
In the Land of `Every Vote Counts,' Uncertainty on Whether It's Counted Correctly
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

(snip)
Hacking Democracy" follows Ms. Harris and her band of unmerry women (and male hackers and hangers-on) as they trudge to polling places, corporate headquarters and court hearings looking for answers. An "irregularity" -- that's computerese for blank existential terror -- that shows up in Volusia County, Fla., in November 2000 energizes their cause: in that county, Mr. Gore seems to have received "-16,022" votes. A deficit. Negative votes. It doesn't take a scientist from Stanford to explain that is just, um, bad.

A second memory card, which vanished into thin air (naturally), may have been loaded into the computer that counted the votes. That's fraud of the highest order. Susan Bernecker, a Republican candidate for City Council in Jefferson Parish, La., in the mid-1990s, went to test the voting machines years ago. Twice, in a demo, she pressed her own name to see how it would register; twice the name of her opponent was registered in the memory of the machine. They test 15 more machines and find the same results.

Rigged voting in Louisiana? Say it ain't so. But it's not shocked-shocked you feel watching this; it's genuine shock. As the drama proceeds, adducing more evidence for the unreliability of the voting machines than can possibly be explored here, you might also feel flattened. Computers count around 80 percent of votes in America. The marketing director for Diebold, Mark Radke, who defends both the company and its chief executive (a major Republican fund-raiser who once promised in a letter to "deliver the electoral votes of Ohio" to President Bush), talks in maddening doublespeak and wears the arched-eyebrow expression of a silent-movie fiend. His Nixon-era nondenial denials turn the stomach.

Bev Harris herself has been rather controversial in these waters -- but there's little denying the public service that she has performed by being involved in this film.

In the film we see Bev and her friends dumpster diving in Georgia and Florida for election materials and managing to discover signed copies of tabulator printouts which by law are supposed to be kept for years following an election.

Harris shows Howard Dean - how to hack an election using MS Access. (Which is not exactly a "high-end" software app)

The HBO film ends with the work of Harri Husti as he manages to duplicate the Volusi County negative vote phenomenon simply by updating the memory card used on a tabulator machine in a demonstration for Ion Sancho of Leon County Fl. - it is apparently this demonstration which eventually led to Sancho to kick Diebold out of the county. Let me point out that this machine is used to count PAPER Ballots and that the results of Hursti's test show that such modifications could be done without detection and could affect all votes throughout not just a single precinct, but an entire county or congressional district depending on how many ballots are sent through the infected machine.

Voting Absentee is No Protection as all ballots are eventually put through the same tabulator machines. If the machine has been tampered with, every vote will be affected.

Unfortunately the real ending for the film isn't nearly as positive as what was shown by HBO.

After kicking out Diebold Sancho ran in to problems with other voting equipment companies who complained "they couldn't trust him".

Now all state-approved companies refuse to sell him the machines he's ordered until he promises to run no further checks on them. And he's had to return the $1/2 million dollar grant he wanted to use to order voting machines for the disabled.

But wait, it gets worse...

After decertifying Diebold for California, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley resigned amid scandal and was replaced by Republican Bruce McPherson (as appointed by Governer Schwarzenegger) who quickly proceeded to recertify Diebold.

Diebold Machines are in use Now, thruout California for Early/Absentee voting.

As was recently shown by Computer Scientists from Princeton, these machines remain highly vulnerable to tampering - all you need is some code and a mini-bar key to access the machine. Even the dim-bulbs on Faux News were shocked when they were shown how to hack an election in 90 seconds.

Husti has also found security holes and "back-doors" in other Diebold machines, holes which the state of Maryland had been aware of for nearly two years.

All it would take is One person to change the outcome of an election according to the Washington Post.

A malicious individual with access to a voting machine could rig the software without being detected. Worse yet, if the attacker rigged the machine used to compute the totals for some precinct, he or she could alter the results of that precinct. The only fix the RABA authors suggested was to warn people that manipulating an election is against the law.

...

Diebold spokesman David Bear admitted to the New York Times that the back door was inserted intentionally so that election officials would be able to update their systems easily. Bear justified Diebold's actions by saying, "For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software... I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

We shouldn't have to trust the veracity of a Diebold spokesmans belief on this issue. But unfortunately, their assurances are pretty much all we have - that and the likelyhood that all of our election workers are honest and honorable.

On a personal note I'm not entirely cynical on this issue, as I happen to be an election worker myself, and have been for the last several years including the 2004 Presidential contest. This month I went through training on the latest ballot reader devices which will be used at all 5026 precincts in Los Angeles County. My mother is an Election Inspector - which means that last Sunday she picked up all of the polling place materials and has been storing them in her living room - including the ballot reader. Now I happen to have a computer software and security background, including 12 years working for a defense contrator and several more as a consultant with the State of california.

IMO There are all kinds of mischief possibilities here. (I noticed during our training that access to the Admin Functions of the reader were not password protected. This may be changed on election day - I would hope!). But to date - simply because of my own personal honor - I haven't touched anything and I won't - But I could if I wanted to.

So could the other inspectors and additional 10,000+ polls workers in this one county. Can we truly expect that everyone will show the same restraint? I would hope so, but unfortunately I think not.

On the positive side, the 5000+ ballot readers which are currently sitting in various living rooms and garages across L.A. County are not being used to count the votes, only to verify that the voter hasn't made any mistakes which might invalidate their vote. They do have the capability to count votes, but that feature has been turned off - for now.

The situation is dire, but it is NOT hopeless. This is no time to hang our heads in frustration and despair. It's time to ACT.

From my years of experience at the polls my suggestion to anyone who feels this is a serious issue is - if you haven't already - take Tuesday off and spend it at your local polling place to WATCH. Citizens have a right to be view their Democracy in progress. Bring a Camera, a note pad and a cell phone.

• Document anyone trying to influence or sway voters (Electioneering within 100 feet of Poll), it's a crime.


• Document any challenges to a voters status, unreasonable requests for ID or their being required to vote provisionally without just cause.


• Federal Law Requires that Poll Workers Update the Street Index every hour to indicate who has already voted. This index (in California) includes that Name, Address, Phone Number and PARTY AFFILIATION of each registered voter. USE YOUR PHONE and get our people to the Polls.

There isn't much we can do about malicious code which may or may not be in play this upcoming Tuesday (Robert F Kennedy Jr has a pending lawsuit against Diebold which should eventually help in the future) but we can do something about the human element right now!.

By acting individually we can avoid the types of "phone bank jamming" tricks that Republicans have used in the past. They can't stop all of us. Don't wait for the campaigns and the politicians to protect your Democracy for you - Take it personally. Get involved and make sure everyones vote counts. We can't afford not too.

Vyan