Diebold Finally Dumps E-Voting Division... But Sells It To Equally Problematic ES&S

from the that-makes-it-better? dept

Ah, Diebold. One of the "big three" e-voting providers out there, its name was the first one that got associated with the problems of e-voting machines, despite problems being found across the board in players in that space. I could never understand why the company continued to fight and deny problems with its machines after so much evidence was presented against them. The smart move would have been to admit that the machines had problems, work with security experts to solve them, and come out with better, safer machines. But that's not what happened. Instead, it stonewalled, denied problems, mocked those who exposed security flaws and kept pushing out questionable machines. Eventually, the stories got so bad, that Diebold realized it was having a seriously negative impact on its other lines of business (including ATMs), so it renamed the e-voting division "Premier Election Solutions" (as if people would forget) and went about trying to sell the thing off -- though, for years it couldn't find any takers.

It took a while, but Diebold has finally found a buyer. ES&S has purchased Diebold's e-voting business for a mere $5 million plus some outstanding revenue. In classic Diebold fashion, the company has announced that it "would not be answering questions about the sale" -- because that's how you go about rebuilding trust.

Meanwhile, it's not like ES&S is any better. It, too, has had massive problems with its e-voting machines, while the company has a history of stonewalling attempts by gov't officials to review their code. Oh, and there's this: company memos showed that the company knew about some of the problems with its voting machines that were used in elections. And the most fun of all? When we questioned why e-voting companies didn't allow independent security researchers to examine machines, an ES&S employee showed up in our comments to call us all idiots.

Now, with the combined ES&S/Diebold/Premier, a ridiculous large percentage of the country's e-voting machines now belong to one company, with an amazingly long family tree of faulty machines and a history of attacking anyone who points out those flaws.

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Turns Out Diebold's ATMs Insecure As Well; Scammers Install Malware

from the what-a-surprise dept

Diebold is pretty well known for being in two separate, though similar, businesses: ATMs and e-voting machines. Its e-voting machines have always had a terrible reputation, with security flaws and bugs galore (the company recently has tried to hide from all the negative publicity by renaming the e-voting division as Premier Election Solutions). However, many people kept asking how the company could get so many things so wrong when it came to e-voting, but still get its ATMs working properly. Of course, as has been noted in the past, the way ATMs work is quite different, and mistakes are likely to be spotted quickly.

However, it's now coming out that Diebold's ATMs also have security problems. Slashdot alerts us to the news that Diebold has issued a patch after discovering that some scammers have been able to install "card sniffing" software on a variety of Diebold ATMs allowing the scammers to get all your card details. Is that Premier Banking Solutions I hear knocking?

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No Surprise Here: Lost Votes In Last Election Due To Faulty Diebold Equipment

from the anyone-surprised? dept

Back in December, we pointed to yet another (in a long line) of stories about lost votes on an e-voting machine in an election in California. The machines in question were from Premier Election Solutions, the shiny coat of paint put on the e-voting unit of Diebold, whose name had been tarnished for a long history of defective, highly vulnerable e-voting machines (along with a long history of denying any problems whatsoever with those machines). You would think after all these years of criticism, and a shiny new name, the company would be a bit more careful to make sure its machines weren't actually defective. No such luck.

As Slashdot points out, the Secretary of State's report on the matter clearly places the blame on Diebold's faulty equipment (warning: pdf file). Still, the scariest part is what we noted in the original story about the problems: despite all of the claims to the contrary, the 200 or so lost votes wouldn't have been noticed at all under Diebold/Premier's normal auditing process. It was only because of an experimental "transparency" project set up by local officials that the mistake was noted. Thus, Diebold machines in other regions may have lost votes, and no one will know about it. So can anyone explain why anyone still uses e-voting machines from this company? For years they've lied, stonewalled, denied problems, attacked critics... and produced faulty equipment over and over again. And it's still being used.

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Maryland Suing Diebold/Premier For Money It Spent To Fix Its Voting Machines

from the pay-up dept

Things just keep getting worse for Diebold's e-voting subsidiary, that was laughably renamed Premier Election Solutions to avoid all of the baggage associated with the Diebold name. It seems that the state of Maryland is suing the company and demanding $8.5 million to cover the money the state had to pay to fix its faulty e-voting machines. You may recall that Maryland has been at the forefront in fighting Diebold/Premier over its machines. Back in 2006, following some rather damning info and significant problems, Maryland's governor wanted to get rid of all of Diebold's machines.

Diebold did its usual thing, responding to different problems, insisting there was no real problem and if there were, that it would all be fixed in time for the election in November of that year. Of course, Diebold didn't actually do much to help -- so the state of Maryland took matters into their own hands to try to fix the flaws in the machines, and now wants Diebold/Premier to pay for the costs of having done so. In rather typical fashion, Diebold/Premier has put out its usual response to pretty much any criticism: claiming it has no clue what anyone is talking about, saying that it is "puzzled by the timing and vagueness" of the lawsuit, while also saying it is: "inaccurate and unfounded." The company also says its about events that occurred "five or more years ago" (apparently, they weren't paying attention in 2006) and that "Maryland just completed one of the smoothest elections in the state's history," though the company fails to note that's more in spite of Diebold/Premier than because of it.

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Oh Look: Even More Lost Votes By Diebold/Premier

from the counting-votes-is-soooo-hard dept

Following last week's revelation of votes lost in California thanks to Premier (better known as Diebold) and its voting equipment, The Register points us to even more votes lost by Premier/Diebold machines in Ohio. Again, it was only because of a special, rare, spot check, which isn't commonly done with these machines, that the lost votes were noticed. And, as usual, Diebold... er... Premier downplayed the discovery:

"We have not seen this particular condition anywhere else in Ohio or anywhere else in the country."

Is it really that difficult for the company to admit that it screwed up? For quite some time now, pretty much every investigation and every more detailed look at any kind of e-voting equipment have turned up similar failures. For the company to brush it off because it hasn't seen "this particular condition" anywhere else is ridiculous. It does make you wonder, though, why anyone would ever buy such equipment and use it in an actual election.

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More Votes Lost By Diebold; Discovered By Unique Voting Transparency Project

from the reliable,-huh? dept

For years and years Diebold Election Systems (now Premier Election Solutions) had always vehemently denied that its e-voting or optical vote scanning machines had any problems -- despite mounds and mounds of evidence of problems. We were shocked, this past summer, when the company finally admitted to a glitch with some of its machines, but the company still downplayed the significance of this, claiming that it didn't believe the glitch (which loses votes) had actually impacted any elections.

Yet, even after this glitch was officially revealed, in the election just last month, we're now finding out that Diebold machines caused 200 lost votes in an election in California. Even worse, no one would even know about this at all if it weren't for a highly ambitious and very unique program set up by some voting activists to ensure there was real transparency. They convinced the local government to let them scan every single ballot and put it online for anyone to view. It was that separate process where they discovered the ballot counts didn't match, and that Diebold seemed to show absolutely no records of the missing ballots, despite having scanned them.

Makes you kinda wonder how many other areas lost votes that absolutely no one knows about because they didn't have such a system in place, huh?

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When We Said We Were In Favor Of Open Source Voting, This Isn't What We Meant

from the a-bit-more-openness-please dept

We've often wondered why various governments haven't mandated open source e-voting systems. After all, if a free and democratic election is supposed involve true transparency into the voting process, it's hard to see how proprietary software can be allowed. However, the big e-voting companies have been staunch supporters of keeping their solutions proprietary. Except... it may turn out that Premier Election Solutions (which was better known as Diebold until it changed its name to get away from the mocking laughter) is actually using some open source software... and not abiding by the license. Artifex Software is suing Premier for apparently using its GPL'd software and not adhering to the GPL terms. Of course, we should note that Diebold (er... Premier) has suggested in the past that it might eventually open source its own product, so maybe a little legal nudge will push it over the edge.

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Diebold/Premier Actually Admits Its Machines Are Faulty! And That It Lied About Antivirus Software...

from the wonders-never-cease dept

Consider me to be in a state of shock. For nearly half a decade Diebold has always responded in the identical way to every single report of a problem or security vulnerability with its e-voting machines: attacking those who pointed out the problem and claiming it really wasn't a problem at all. This has happened time and time again that I'm not even sure how to react when the company (renamed Premier to get away from the Diebold name stigma) has finally admitted that its machines have a flaw that drops votes. Oops. It's warning 34 states that use the machines of the problem which was highlighted in the lawsuit Ohio filed against Premiere/Diebold. Not only that, but it's admitting the flaw in the software has been in the software for the past decade.

So, uh, why was the company blaming anti-virus software just a couple months ago?

It should also make us question Premier/Diebold's longstanding claim that independent outsiders should not be allowed to inspect its machines for problems. Of course, Diebold execs are already downplaying all of this, claiming that they were "confident" that this hadn't actually impacted any elections, though they offer no proof of that. The company's president admits he's "distressed" that they were wrong in their previous analysis, but he fails to explain why the company is so against letting outsides inspect the machines to avoid such flaws. In the meantime, the company insists that the problem will be patched in time for the November election, and I'm sure we're all confident that there won't be any other problems with their machines, right?

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Premiere/Diebold: You're Doing It Wrong

from the a-little-Friday-humor dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about Ohio's lawsuit against Premiere Elections Systems -- better known by its previous name, Diebold -- where we noted Premiere's claim that the problems were the fault of antivirus software. That didn't make much sense, as we noted, but Randall Munroe has explained just how ridiculous this is (in a way that only he can) with his latest xkcd comic:

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Ohio Sues Diebold/Premiere Over Lost E-Voting Votes

from the instead-of-a-fine,-the-lost-votes-would-be-great dept

You may recall late last year that an investigation in Ohio turned up that all e-voting machines used in the state during the 2004 election had malfunctioning problems. Earlier this year, officials declared machines from that election a crime scene to be investigated, and now Ohio has filed a lawsuit against Premiere Election Solutions, the company better known as Diebold (it changed its name after tons of bad press).

Premiere/Diebold, of course, were at the heart of early stories about e-voting machine flaws, and the company consistently fought against anyone who suggested there was anything wrong with its machines, despite overwhelming evidence. Instead, it tried to bully those who spoke out against the company, or paint them as extremist kooks. Yet, with each passing story, it appears that the concerns were very, very real. As per usual, Premiere/Diebold is doing little to actually address the issues in this particular lawsuit, claiming:

"We certainly feel strongly that we, in fact, have fulfilled the contract with the state of Ohio. It's a high-quality voting system that continues to operate in many, many Ohio counties with great success."

I'm not sure if the "contract" allowed for completely dropping votes, but assuming it did, that's hardly something to brag about. Also, pointing out that other states use the same machines isn't a defense -- it should be an alarm for those other states to start investigating as well. Other than that, Premiere/Diebold has relied on its usual defense: "It wasn't our fault!" Instead, the company claims that antivirus software interfered with the voting tabulation system. That's a pretty weak excuse -- especially since (as Ohio points out) the system was certified with antivirus software installed. Besides, what kind of software is Premiere/Diebold building if antivirus software causes it to lose votes? Not the type of software I'd want running my elections.

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New Study Shows Massive Error Rates In E-Voting Machines

from the that-can-swing-an-election dept

Just as e-voting firm Sequoia is resisting having its machines reviewed independently, the Brookings Institute has put a bunch of e-voting machines to the test, and found error rates around 3% on some of the machines. These weren't errors due to software problems, but usability problems, where the design of the system resulted in people voting for a candidate they did not want. 3% is a huge number, and could easily change the results of an election. While the study found that people generally like e-voting technology, that still doesn't mean it's particularly effective. One other interesting part of the finding: when there was a voter-verified paper trail, it didn't cut down on errors. This suggests that many voters were either confused or didn't even bother to verify their vote. This should all be very worrisome. Even ignoring the technology problems that these machines have been shown to have, the fact that the design tends to create so many mistake votes should lead people to seriously question the use of e-voting machines.

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United Technologies Corporation Makes A Bid For Diebold

from the buy-now,-vote-later... dept

Just as the Onion is poking fun at Diebold for releasing the results of the 2008 Presidential election months early, it appears that United Technologies Corporation is attempting a hostile takeover of the company after it turned down a private offer. Diebold is mostly known these days for its controversial e-voting business (which the company has renamed "Premiere" to try to disassociate it with the Diebold name) but is also a major player in the ATM business. Whether or not UTC takes the company over, there's little doubt that Diebold has done a terrible job responding to the questions and accusations about the security and reliability of its e-voting machines. Having a company like UTC come in and take over could actually do a lot for the company to regain some trust.

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No One Will Trust Elections So Long As Questionable Voting Machines Are Used

from the time-to-fix-the-system dept

Following last week's New Hampshire primary, I've been besieged by people pushing stories suggesting massive problems with Diebold/Premiere's optical scan machines. It's well-documented that the machines have poor security and can be hacked, but it's a big leap to go from "can" to "were." And while some point to discrepancies in the vote tallies in places that used the Diebold counters and places that hand counted, a more thorough look at the numbers doesn't suggest anything nefarious. However, the really key point is that, thanks to years of doubletalk from e-voting vendors, as well as story after story after story about e-voting insecurities -- which none of the major vendors took seriously -- we've now reached a point where many people's natural conclusion is that these insecure machines were at fault. This is an issue that could have easily been solved years ago if the folks at Diebold/Premiere, ES&S, and Sequoia hadn't acted like e-voting security was a private matter, rather than a matter of national interest. If they had recognized that their own business prospects would be much stronger if the populace actually trusted their machines, perhaps they would have actually responded to security concerns, rather than laughing them off or denying them entirely. So while there may not have actually been any security problems with the voting machines last week, it's Diebold's fault that so many people think it's plausible.

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Colorado The Latest To Ditch E-Voting Machines

from the sounds-familiar dept

Just days after Ohio announced problems with all of the e-voting machines used in that state, Colorado has decertified e-voting machines from all four major vendors in the space, noting serious problems with them all, including a 1% error rate in counting ballots (1%!). So at what point do the e-voting companies stop stonewalling and finally just admit that they need to start again from scratch? At this point, it's beyond clear that none of these firms is even the least bit trustworthy -- and yet, they continue to protest these decertifications, despite piles upon piles of evidence that these machines have serious problems.

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Ohio Finds All E-Voting Machines In The State Had Serious Flaws

from the no-surprise-there dept

Earlier this year, California found all sorts of problems with e-voting machines used in the state. Now, Ohio, home to some of the more controversial stories surrounding presidential elections, has also found serious flaws in every e-voting machine used in the state. It's the usual stuff that has been pointed out for years: it was easy to pick locks on the machines, introduce fake votes, and load up dangerous unauthorized software onto the machines. Not much new there -- just another confirmation. What's much more interesting is the reaction of the firms involved.

First up is "Premier Election Solution," who you probably would recognize better under its old name: Diebold. The company changed its name a few months ago, hoping people would no longer associate Premier with all of the ridiculously bad history associated with Diebold. A Premier official said that all of the problems noted in the report have been fixed in its new machines. While that's a better response than Diebold's typical response of trashing any researcher who points out a flaw or cracking jokes about the flaws, it's one of the few times we've ever seen Diebold/Premier admit that older machines actually did have significant flaws. Of course, the few times that's happened in the past, it's always come with the same sort of "but everything is fixed now!" clause. And... every time a Diebold/Premier representative says something along those lines, it's only a matter of months until new flaws are announced. So, given Diebold's history, it's pretty difficult to take the company's word that all the flaws have now been fixed.

Even worse, though, is the response of ES&S, who has become even more Diebold-like in its responses to various problems found in its machines. On the Ohio report, ES&S responded: "We can also tell you that our 35 years in the field of elections has demonstrated that Election Systems and Software voting technology is accurate, reliable and secure." Note that this doesn't actually respond to any of the specific criticisms in the report. As for that history, let's take you back to a few of ES&S's greatest hits: this is the company that was caught providing uncertified software to California, while also failing to disclose foreign manufacturing partners (as required by federal law). It's also the company responsible for the well-known case in Florida where thousands of votes went missing and the election in Texas where votes were counted three times. And, of course, let's not forget the internal memos at ES&S which showed the company knew about problems with its software, while publicly stating that the machines were perfectly fine. So, sorry, ES&S, you can try to pretend those things didn't happen, but the history you point to hardly shows that your machines are "accurate, reliable and secure." It shows a company that will say anything to avoid admitting that its machines have problems.

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Recounting Touch-Screen Elections In Ohio

from the problems-galore dept

Joseph Beck writes "Here in the Cleveland area there are a few election races that must be recounted because the final results were close. The county uses touchscreen machines from Diebold. The machines print a paper ballot that is reviewed by the voter. State law calls for those paper ballots to be used for the recount. The problem is, some of those ballots did not print properly because of paper jams and malfunctions, and are not readable. The Ohio Secretary of State has declared that those votes can be counted by simply reprinting the paper ballot from the memory card. Of course that defeats the purpose of a voter-verified audit trail, but she says it is acceptable. The next day the news came out that the number of unreadable ballots was actually 20% of all ballots. A spokesman for Diebold said "That is a percentage that prompts us to do further investigation." I'm sure they'll get right on it."

Anyone want to take odds on how long it will take before Diebold or another e-voting supporter uses this failure as an example of why they were better off without a voter-verifiable paper trail in the first place? Diebold and others have always used the "well, paper receipts jam" excuse in the past, meaning the companies have little incentive to come up with ways to prevent such paper jams.

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Judge Voids Election Results Over E-Voting Results That Couldn't Be Audited

from the nice-work dept

Apparently a judge in Alameda County, California, has voided some election results after the e-voting tallies from Diebold machines couldn't be audited. The vote was on a controversial ballot measure, where the end result was quite close. Some activists went to court to demand a recount, but elections officials had already sent the machines back to Diebold, who had conveniently erased 96% of the necessary audit information. The issue will return to the ballot in the next election. Either way, this highlights one of the problems of e-voting machines that have no verifiable audit trail, and it's nice to see a judge actually recognizing that. Of course, this time it was for a ballot measure that can wait until the next election. What about cases where these machines were used for electing officials?

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E-Voting Ballots May Not Be So Secret; Paper Trail Takes Away Anonymity

from the line-'em-up,-match-'em-up dept

Another day, another security problem with e-voting machines. Obviously, one of the biggest requests from people who were nervous about the security of e-voting machines was that all e-voting machines have a verifiable paper trail. Then, at least, there's a way to recount the votes if there are any questions. Unfortunately, even when the e-voting companies finally do add a paper trail, it seems that they muck up the process. As was noted in the recent security analysis of these machines, many of the problems are because they weren't designed from the ground up with security in mind, but rather have security procedures slapped on as extras.

In this case, some Ohio activists discovered that the paper trail coming from e-voting firm Election Systems and Software (ES&S) happen to have time and date stamps on them. Those ballots are available for anyone to look at, based on election law in Ohio. Also available for anyone to peruse are the voter sign-in logs. With both of those in hand, it's not hard to put together a pretty decent list of who voted for what. You just match up the names in the order they signed in with the timestamp on the ballots.

Of course, rather than responding to this as they should, by admitting it was a bad idea, ES&S sends out their PR people to say it's no big deal. While ES&S is right that it might not always be possible to do an exact match person to person, you can come pretty close -- and that should be seen as a huge concern. Furthermore, as Ed Felten points out, the other e-voting firms aren't much better, and Diebold (or Premiere, or whatever its new name is) appears to be outright lying skirting the truth when it claims that its paper trail doesn't include timestamps (update:: Ed Felten points out that the Diebold ballots don't have a time stamp, but the electronic records do). It's not hard to see how this happened, but the continued denial and stonewalling from the e-voting companies, rather than admitting a mistake was made and explaining how they're going to fix things, really is troubling.

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For Sale! Crappy E-Voting System With A Horrible Reputation For Security! What? No Takers?

from the who-wouldn't-want-to-buy-it? dept

Last October, Diebold admitted that all of the bad publicity around the security problems related to their e-voting machines had the company thinking not about fixing those security problems, being more open with the security community and admitting their past mistakes -- but about getting out of the business entirely by selling the unit off to some other company to deal with. Of course, when just about every headline about your company is trashing it -- and the best you can do is crack jokes about the security problems and deny any problems exist (despite tons and tons of evidence by well-known experts in the field) -- you might imagine it would be tough to find a willing buyer. You'd be right. Diebold admitted today that no one wants to buy the e-voting unit, so the company is stuck with it. So what's the company going to do? Admit it made mistakes in the past and is now going to fix them and take e-voting concerns seriously? Of course not! They're simply going to distance the e-voting business from the rest of the company. They're going to run the e-voting unit entirely separately from the rest of Diebold (which is a big ATM maker). The quotes from Diebold's CEO don't sound like someone who is trying to fix a struggling business, but someone who wants to distance himself from the business, saying that they'll support it for the "foreseeable future." Perhaps if the company had actually taken all of the concerns seriously the business wouldn't be struggling and the rest of the company wouldn't be so ashamed to be associated with the e-voting portion.

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Diebold, Disney, Many Others Caught Editing Wikipedia Entries In Their Favor

from the no-socker-there dept

This will probably come as a surprise to absolutely no one, but a new Wikipedia scanner service is matching the IP address of Wikipedia edits to the organizations the IPs are associated with -- and it's turning up some interesting matches. For example, there's the person coming from a Diebold IP who deleted paragraphs and paragraphs of Wikipedia content that highlighted Diebold's ongoing security problems. Then there's the Disney employee who tried to pull a link to Cory Doctorow's speech on why DRM is bad for business from the DRM entry. Wired is actually keeping a running tally of some of the most interesting edits. Now, before people use this as more evidence as to Wikipedia's trust problems, it doesn't look like those edits did much damage, as they were quickly changed back to the more appropriate entries by those watching out for vandalism.

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