Security Evaluation of ES&S Voting Machines and Election
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Electoral Systems, Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machines
Abstract This article explores the assemblage of voting: electoral systems, Direct Recording Electronic voting machines (DREs), ballots and ballot booths, and the central role of secrecy. Its aim is to argue that the contemporary political subjectivity of deliberation is intimately tied up with this assem- blage. Based on ethnographic research, this article shows how controversies around DREs can reveal the ways in which the very possibility for delibera- tion is tied to the structure and implementation of these machines. It argues for a new approach to deliberation that includes debate, participation and co-construction of the technical systems whereby we vote, as well as those where we express opinions. Towards an Anthropology of Deliberation Christopher M. Kelty 1 October 2008 1University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Information Studies and the Center for Society and Genetics) introduction A political scientist, a cognitive scientist, and a computer scientist walk into a room. What sounds like the beginning of a bad joke|something about the anxiety of requiring the word \science" in the job title|was actually a class that I participated in, in the Fall of 2006, called \Election Systems, Technologies and Administration" (see Fig 1). The class combined approaches from cognitive science, political science and computer science{but it wasn't necessarily an attempt to combine them into a coherent approach. Rather voting and elections were subjected to an array of approaches, as the course description made clear: \how individuals interact with technology," \how technologies are engineered to be secure and accurate" and \how the social aspects of voting fulfill democratic goals for elections." These approaches covered human factors engineering, human- computer interaction and cognitive models of information processing, com- puter security research, election outcomes analysis, voting behavior and so on. -
Black Box Voting Ballot Tampering in the 21St Century
This free internet version is available at www.BlackBoxVoting.org Black Box Voting — © 2004 Bev Harris Rights reserved to Talion Publishing/ Black Box Voting ISBN 1-890916-90-0. You can purchase copies of this book at www.Amazon.com. Black Box Voting Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century By Bev Harris Talion Publishing / Black Box Voting This free internet version is available at www.BlackBoxVoting.org Contents © 2004 by Bev Harris ISBN 1-890916-90-0 Jan. 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever except as provided for by U.S. copyright law. For information on this book and the investigation into the voting machine industry, please go to: www.blackboxvoting.org Black Box Voting 330 SW 43rd St PMB K-547 • Renton, WA • 98055 Fax: 425-228-3965 • [email protected] • Tel. 425-228-7131 This free internet version is available at www.BlackBoxVoting.org Black Box Voting © 2004 Bev Harris • ISBN 1-890916-90-0 Dedication First of all, thank you Lord. I dedicate this work to my husband, Sonny, my rock and my mentor, who tolerated being ignored and bored and galled by this thing every day for a year, and without fail, stood fast with affection and support and encouragement. He must be nuts. And to my father, who fought and took a hit in Germany, who lived through Hitler and saw first-hand what can happen when a country gets suckered out of democracy. And to my sweet mother, whose an- cestors hosted a stop on the Underground Railroad, who gets that disapproving look on her face when people don’t do the right thing. -
Electronic Voting & Counting Technologies
ELECTION TECHNOLOGY SERIES Electronic Voting & Counting Technologies A Guide to Conducting Feasibility Studies Ben Goldsmith Senior Electoral Advisor Electronic Voting & Counting Technologies Ben Goldsmith Senior Electoral Advisor International Foundation for Electoral Systems Electronic Voting & Counting Technologies A Guide to Conducting Feasibility Studies Ben Goldsmith Senior Electoral Advisor May 2011 Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Electronic Voting & Counting Technologies: A Guide to Conducting Feasibility Studies Ben Goldsmith © 2011 by IFES. All rights reserved. International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) 1850 K Street, NW Fifth Floor Washington, D.C. 20006 U.S.A. Notice of rights All rights reserved. No part of this report can be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior permission of the publisher. Printed in USA ISBN: 1-931459-64-9 Photo Credits Cover: Ripple Effect Productions Page 36: Ripple Effect Productions Garie Briones Page 51: Lean Pasion Page 1: John Lawrence Page 59: Everton Bahl Grabski Page 9: Francisco Samões Page 70: Júlio Henrique da Silva Lopes Page 17: Ripple Effect Productions Page 75: Oliver Scott-Tomlin Page 25: João Cesário ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks are due to a number of colleagues and friends who were kind enough to take the time to review and comment on the initial drafts of this guide. Special thanks are due to Susanne Caarls, Peter Erben, Juhani Grossmann, Ole Holtved, Manuel Kripp, Ronan McDermott, Vladimir Pran, Amna Qayyum and Mike Yard, all of whom provided invaluable suggestions for improvements and additional areas which needed to be covered by the guide. -
On the Notion of “Software Independence” in Voting Systems
On the notion of “software independence” in voting systems Ronald L. Rivest John P. Wack Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA 02139 [email protected] National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory Gaithersburg, MD 20899 [email protected] DRAFT Version July 28, 2006 Abstract. This paper defines and explores the notion of “software in- dependence” in voting systems: A voting system is software-independent if an undetected change or error in its software cannot cause an undetectable change or error in an election outcome. We propose that software independent voting systems should be pre- ferred, and software-dependent voting systems should be avoided. VVPAT and some cryptographically-based voting systems are software-independent. Variations and implications of this definition are explored. This white paper is also for discussion by the Technical Guidelines Devel- opment Committee (TGDC) in its development of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) of 2007. 1 Introduction The main purpose of this paper is to introduce and carefully define the ter- minology of “software-independent” and “software-dependent” voting systems, and to discuss their properties. This paper is definitional in character; there are no “results” as such. The contribution is to help provide crisp terminology for discussing voting systems and some recommendations for its usage in the VVSG 2007, currently under development by NIST and the TGDC. This paper starts by describing the problem that software-independence ad- dresses: complex and difficult-to-test software in voting systems. It then defines what constitutes a software-independent approach to voting system design. -
How Electronic Voting Companies' Proprietary Code Ruins Elections Andrew Massey
Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal Volume 27 | Number 1 Article 6 1-1-2004 But We Have to Protect Our Source: How Electronic Voting Companies' Proprietary Code Ruins Elections Andrew Massey Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_comm_ent_law_journal Part of the Communications Law Commons, Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons, and the Intellectual Property Law Commons Recommended Citation Andrew Massey, But We Have to Protect Our Source: How Electronic Voting Companies' Proprietary Code Ruins Elections, 27 Hastings Comm. & Ent. L.J. 233 (2004). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_comm_ent_law_journal/vol27/iss1/6 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "But we have to protect our source!": How Electronic Voting Companies' Proprietary Code Ruins Elections by ANDREW MASSEY* I. Introduction .................................................................................. 234 II. Voting Systems and Open Source Code .................................... 236 A . V oting System s ............................................................................. 236 B . O pen Source C ode ....................................................................... 238 III. Proprietary -
Chapter 08-Talion
Company Information 63 This free internet version is available at www.BlackBoxVoting.org Black Box Voting — © 2004 Bev Harris Rights reserved. ISBN 1-890916-90-0. Paperback version can be purchased at www.Amazon.com 8 Company Information (What you won’t find on the company Web sites) If anything should remain part of the public commons, it is voting. Yet as we have progressed through a series of new voting methods, control of our voting systems, and even our understanding of how they work, has come under new ownership. “It’s a shell game, with money, companies and corporate brands switching in a blur of buy-outs and bogus fronts. It’s a sink- hole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed Christian fascists, CIA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers — and presidential family members — lie down together in the slime. It’s a hacker’s dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly-programmed computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically-partisan private firms, and pro- tected by law from public scrutiny.” 1 The previous quote, printed in a Russian publication, leads an article which mixes inaccuracies with disturbing truths. Should we assume crooks are in control? Is it a shell game? Whatever it is, it has certainly deviated from community-based counting of votes by the local citizenry. We began buying voting machines in the 1890s, choosing clunky mechanical-lever machines, in part to reduce the shenanigans going This free internet version is available at www.BlackBoxVoting.org 64 Black Box Voting on with manipulating paper-ballot counts. -
Black Box Voting Report
330 SW 43rd St Suite K PMB-547 Renton WA 98055 425-793-1030 – [email protected] http://www.blackboxvoting.org The Black Box Report SECURITY ALERT: July 4, 2005 Critical Security Issues with Diebold Optical Scan Design Prepared by: Harri Hursti [email protected] Special thanks to Kalle Kaukonen for pre-publication review On behalf of Black Box Voting, Inc. A nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501c(3) consumer protection group for elections Executive Summary The findings of this study indicate that the architecture of the Diebold Precinct-Based Optical Scan 1.94w voting system inherently supports the alteration of its basic functionality, and thus the alteration of the produced results each time an election is prepared. The fundamental design of the Diebold Precinct-Based Optical Scan 1.94w system (AV OS) includes the optical scan machine, with an embedded system containing firmware, and the removable media (memory card), which should contain only the ballot box, the ballot design and the race definitions, but also contains a living thing – an executable program which acts on the vote data. Changing this executable program on the memory card can change the way the optical scan machine functions and the way the votes are reported. The system won’t work without this program on the memory card. Whereas we would expect to see vote data in a sealed, passive environment, this system places votes into an open active environment. With this architecture, every time an election is conducted it is necessary to reinstall part of the functionality into the Optical Scan system via memory card, making it possible to introduce program functions (either authorized or unauthorized), either wholesale or in a targeted manner, with no way to verify that the certified or even standard functionality is maintained from one voting machine to the next. -
Cost of Counting the Vote
Cost of Counting the Vote The Price of Upgrading Voting Systems in 43 U.S. Counties By Aquene Freechild and Hamdi Soysal, Public Citizen’s Democracy Is For People Campaign May 31, 2018 - Amid serious concerns about whether our elections are secure from hackers and computer error, many state and local governments are looking to replace out-of-date paperless voting systems with paper ballot and electronic scanner systems. Pricing of voting equipment is often opaque, and in many cases, prices are negotiated on a local level. To bring some much-needed clarity to the issue, this report examines how much 43 county governments in 10 states paid for voting equipment. With this information in hand, local election officials and citizens can make the most of limited election equipment dollars. The states are: California, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. Our key finding: While most precinct ballot scanners cost around $5,000 to $6,000, some counties have been able to negotiate more favorable pricing. However, a few counties paid a much higher than average price for their equipment. Our key conclusion: It’s important that counties band together or engage state authorities where appropriate to negotiate prices and get the best contract terms for voting equipment. Leasing equipment is an option for county officials to address the security threats quickly without committing to buying new systems on a short time frame. Limited Federal Funding In the 2018 federal spending bill passed by Congress in March 2018, lawmakers made $380 million in election security funding available to states for replacing paperless voting systems, implementing post-election audits and securing election databases. -
The New Jersey Voting-Machine Lawsuit and the AVC Advantage DRE Voting Machine
The New Jersey Voting-machine Lawsuit and the AVC Advantage DRE Voting Machine Andrew W. Appel∗ Maia Ginsburg Harri Hursti Brian W. Kernighan Princeton University Princeton University Princeton University Christopher D. Richards Gang Tan Penny Venetis Princeton University Lehigh University Rutgers School of Law – Newark Abstract As a result of a public-interest lawsuit, by Court order we were able to study, for one month, the hardware and source code of the Sequoia AVC Advantage direct-recording electronic voting machine, which is used throughout New Jersey (and Louisiana), and the Court has permitted us to publicly describe almost everything that we were able to learn. In short, these machines are vulnerable to a wide variety of attacks on the voting process. It would not be in the slightest difficult for a moderately determined group or individual to mount a vote-stealing attack that would be successful and undetectable. 1 Litigation and legislation in New Jersey In October 2004 a group of public-interest plaintiffs, represented by Professor Penny Venetis of the Rutgers Law School, sued the State of New Jersey (in NJ Superior Court) over the State’s use of direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines in New Jersey. By 2004, most of New Jersey’s counties had adopted the Sequoia AVC Advantage full-face DRE. Currently 18 out of New Jersey’s 21 counties use this DRE. The plaintiffs argued that the use of DRE voting machines is illegal and unconstitutional: illegal, because they violate New Jersey election laws requiring that all votes be counted accurately and that voting machines be thoroughly tested, accurate, and reliable; and unconstitutional, because they violate the New Jersey constitution’s requirement that all votes count.1 The plaintiffs argued that one cannot trust a paperless DRE machine to count the vote. -
Supreme Court of the United States ______
No. 19-1399 IN THE Supreme Court of the United States ______________________________ SHELBY ADVOCATES FOR VALID ELECTIONS, ET AL., Petitioners, v. TRE HARGETT, ET AL. Respondents. ______________________________ On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ______________________________ BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE INDIVIDUAL ELECTION SECURITY EXPERTS IN SUPPORT OF CERTIORARI ______________________________ Courtney Hostetler John D. Graubert Ronald Fein Counsel of Record John Bonifaz Megan C. Keenan Ben Clements Ryan Miller FREE SPEECH FOR PEOPLE Jeremy Patashnik 1320 Centre St. #405 COVINGTON & BURLING LLP Newton, MA 02459 One CityCenter (617) 249-3015 850 Tenth Street, NW Washington, DC 20001 [email protected] (202) 662-6000 July 22, 2020 Counsel for Amici Curiae i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ....................................... ii INTERESTS OF AMICI CURIAE .............................. 1 SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT ..................................... 2 ARGUMENT ............................................................... 4 I. ABSENT IMMEDIATE REVIEW, VOTING MACHINES IN SHELBY COUNTY WILL CONTINUE TO CAUSE FLAWED ELECTIONS. ...................................... 4 A. The Voting Machines At Issue Are Fundamentally Deficient. ............................5 B. The Voting Machines At Issue Cannot Be Reliably Audited. .................................. 12 C. As a Result of the Sixth Circuit’s Ruling, the Voting Machines At Issue Will Continue To Harm Voters. ................. 15 II. THE SIXTH CIRCUIT’S DECISION CONFLICTS WITH ELEVENTH CIRCUIT PRECEDENT PERMITTING PLAINTIFFS TO CHALLENGE SIMILAR HARMS TO THEIR VOTING RIGHTS. ........... 17 CONCLUSION .......................................................... 27 APPENDIX: List of Individual Election Security Experts ............ 1a ii TABLE OF AUTHORITIES Page(s) Cases Andrade v. NAACP of Austin, 345 S.W.3d 1 (Tex. 2011) ..................................... 20 City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95 (1983) ............................................... -
Absentee Voting and Vote by Mail
CHapteR 7 ABSENTEE VOTING AND VOTE BY MAIL Introduction some States the request is valid for one or more years. In other States, an application must be com- Ballots are cast by mail in every State, however, the pleted and submitted for each election. management of absentee voting and vote by mail varies throughout the nation, based on State law. Vote by Mail—all votes are cast by mail. Currently, There are many similarities between the two since Oregon is the only vote by mail State; however, both involve transmitting paper ballots to voters and several States allow all-mail ballot voting options receiving voted ballots at a central election office for ballot initiatives. by a specified date. Many of the internal procedures for preparation and mailing of ballots, ballot recep- Ballot Preparation and Mailing tion, ballot tabulation and security are similar when One of the first steps in preparing to issue ballots applied to all ballots cast by mail. by mail is to determine personnel and facility and The differences relate to State laws, rules and supply needs. regulations that control which voters can request a ballot by mail and specific procedures that must be Facility Needs: followed to request a ballot by mail. Rules for when Adequate secure space for packaging the outgoing ballot requests must be received, when ballots are ballot envelopes should be reviewed prior to every mailed to voters, and when voted ballots must be election, based on the expected quantity of ballots returned to the election official—all defer according to be processed. Depending upon the number of ballot to State law. -
Firmware Manipulations on an Optical Scan Voting Terminal
Taking Total Control of Voting Systems: Firmware Manipulations on an Optical Scan Voting Terminal Seda Davtyan Sotiris Kentros Aggelos Kiayias Laurent Michel Nicolas Nicolaou Alexander Russell Andrew See Narasimha Shashidhar Alexander A. Shvartsman Voting Technology Research Center and Computer Science and Engineering Department University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA fseda,skentros,aggelos,ldm,nicolas,acr,andysee,karpoor,[email protected] ABSTRACT chines by presenting a detailed case study focusing on the The firmware of an electronic voting machine is typically AccuVote Optical Scan Terminal (AV-OS) that is widely treated as a \trusted" component of the system. Conse- used in the US elections. Our investigation demonstrates quently, it is misconstrued to be vulnerable only to an insider the possibility of an array of firmware manipulation attacks attack by someone with an in-depth knowledge of the sys- against the AV-OS that are characterized by their low cost tem and access to the source code. This case study focuses (<$300) and the fact that they were developed without on the Diebold/Premier AccuVote Optical Scan voting ter- any access to hardware specifications or the source code of minal (AV-OS) that is widely used in the USA elections. We any software running in this system. By virtue of being a present three low level manipulations of the above voting ter- firmware modification, our attacks are totally immune to minal's firmware resulting in divergence from its prescribed cryptographic integrity checks or any other type of auditing operation: (i) the first bestows the terminal with a powerful procedure (aside from an auditing procedure that inspects memory card dumping functionality, (ii) the second enables the firmware itself, which is a type of audit whose impor- the terminal to leak the ballot details through its serial port tance is strongly underscored by our work).