An Activist’s Life, by Thomas Leavitt

[The elections official in this article, Elaine Ginnold, makes the case for why we shouldn’t trust these people to properly evaluate the security of the systems under their control far better than any argument of logic or theory ever could… -Thomas]

Time to Recall E-Vote Machines?

By Kim Zetter

08:39 AM Oct. 06, 2003 PT

As Californians head to the polls on Tuesday, voters in at least one county will cast their ballots electronically on machines that have been shown to be flawed.

Election officials around the country have been switching to new computerized polling machines with the hope of avoiding a repeat of the Florida debacle over punch-card voting that marred the 2000 presidential election.

But a training session for poll workers in Alameda County suggests problems other than hanging chads could surface this time around.

[…]

Furthermore, security around passwords was lax. The password for the card used to close down a machine at the end of an election is printed in Diebold manuals, which workers keep in their homes over the election weekend. The password is the same easy-to-guess number that opens combination locks securing machines at polling stations.

“We have to have something that’s easy for poll workers to remember,” Ginnold said. [This is a violation of the first rule of password security. How many times have the system administrators in the audience heard this before? Hmm… every single one of you. How unsurprising. -Ed.]

[…]

Although poll workers do not undergo background checks, Ginnold says she doesn’t worry about the possibility that one will tamper with machines.

“The election process is mainly based on trust,” Ginnold said. “We trust that poll workers are not going to be tampering with them. [DOH! -Ed.]

“We feel the machines are pretty secure because in order to do anything with them, other than break them up with a hammer, you have to have a key to get into that memory card compartment.”

The fact that supervisors do have a key to the memory-card compartment, didn’t seem to worry her either. “Because what can somebody do with the machines?” she asked.

[…]

Ginnold doesn’t like to think about such scenarios.

“I could think about all these theoretical arguments … and horror stories about what someone could do, but I’m not going to worry about that,” she said. “You know, you might as well not have an election.” [”must… control… Fist… of… Death…” - this is a “Dilbert” reference. -Ed.]

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2003 at 3:37 pm, and is filed under Voting Machine Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

[The elections official in this article, Elaine Ginnold, makes the case for why we shouldn’t trust these people to properly evaluate the security of the systems under their control far better than any argument of logic or theory ever could… -Thomas]

Time to Recall E-Vote Machines?

By Kim Zetter

08:39 AM Oct. 06, 2003 PT

As Californians head to the polls on Tuesday, voters in at least one county will cast their ballots electronically on machines that have been shown to be flawed.

Election officials around the country have been switching to new computerized polling machines with the hope of avoiding a repeat of the Florida debacle over punch-card voting that marred the 2000 presidential election.

But a training session for poll workers in Alameda County suggests problems other than hanging chads could surface this time around.

[…]

Furthermore, security around passwords was lax. The password for the card used to close down a machine at the end of an election is printed in Diebold manuals, which workers keep in their homes over the election weekend. The password is the same easy-to-guess number that opens combination locks securing machines at polling stations.

“We have to have something that’s easy for poll workers to remember,” Ginnold said. [This is a violation of the first rule of password security. How many times have the system administrators in the audience heard this before? Hmm… every single one of you. How unsurprising. -Ed.]

[…]

Although poll workers do not undergo background checks, Ginnold says she doesn’t worry about the possibility that one will tamper with machines.

“The election process is mainly based on trust,” Ginnold said. “We trust that poll workers are not going to be tampering with them. [DOH! -Ed.]

“We feel the machines are pretty secure because in order to do anything with them, other than break them up with a hammer, you have to have a key to get into that memory card compartment.”

The fact that supervisors do have a key to the memory-card compartment, didn’t seem to worry her either. “Because what can somebody do with the machines?” she asked.

[…]

Ginnold doesn’t like to think about such scenarios.

“I could think about all these theoretical arguments … and horror stories about what someone could do, but I’m not going to worry about that,” she said. “You know, you might as well not have an election.” [”must… control… Fist… of… Death…” -Ed.]

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2003 at 3:37 pm, and is filed under Voting Machine Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.