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January 29, 2008

IF IT'S BROKE, DON'T FIX IT

By Teresa Blakely

Crony Capitalism and the Demise of Our Democracy

The final chapter?
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's EVEREST study has demonstrated how
badly the Ohio taxpayers were ripped off by dishonest voting machine vendors and
complicit Board of Election Officials. Brunner has been forced to act decisively ahead
of the presidential election to address a crisis of election integrity that she inherited
from former Secretary J Kenneth Blackwell and former Ohio Republican Party Chair
and Director of Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Bob Bennett. Bennett's "kill the
messenger" attack on Brunner is a way to divert blame for the consequences of years
of corrupt and incompetent "bad old boy" election management. Bennett remains
true to his crony constituency, the voting machine vendors, by refusing to address
the dangers posed to our democracy by notoriously fraud-friendly touchscreen voting
machines. Push a button, accept the computer output, no audits, no questions asked.
A most excellent way to choose the next leader of the free world.
It boggles my mind that Bennett, can tell reporters that he had not seen the EVEREST
report yet claim there is nothing wrong with the voting machines. This sort of willful
ignorance is what contributed to the purchase of inadequately tested, fraud-friendly
electronic voting machines in the first place. Secretary Brunner does not want to
have insecure, defective voting machines in use in Ohio for the next presidential
election. Any attempt to thwart this goal is suspect.
--What confidence crisis?
The following Republicans have not conducted themselves in a manner that inspires
trust in their judgment and integrity in managing our elections. Jack Abramoff
represented Diebold at the time when the House Government Operations Committee,
chaired by Bob Ney, was establishing rules for electronic voting systems. Diebold
contributed at least $275,000 in lobbying fees to Jack Abramoff's law firm, Greenberg
Traurig. Former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, another convicted felon and the lead
sponsor of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA)strongly opposed legislation requiring a
paper audit trail[1]. Ney spearheaded the hasty move to electronic voting machines
[2]. Diebold's then CEO Wally O'Dell, who promised to deliver Ohio votes to George
W. Bush [3], resigned amidst securities fraud litigation [4]. Ken Blackwell was
Secretary of State while co-chairing the Bush/Cheney campaign[5]. Now chairman of
the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers' report on "What Went Wrong in
Ohio" described massive and unprecedented voter irregularities in 2004 caused by
intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Blackwell [6]. Mitch
Given, a Diebold lobbyist contributed $10,000 to Blackwell's gubernatorial campaign.
[7] Looking back to the early 1990's, convicted computer fraud felon Jeff Dean
programmed what became Diebold's optiscan software.[8] In 2004 Franklin County
Board of Election Director Matt Damschroder accepted $10,000 from a Diebold
intermediary and donated it to the Franklin County Republican party. [9] Remarkably,
in 2007 Damschroder was unanimously elected President of the Ohio Association of
Election Officials.[10] In 2006 the Republican dominated Ohio Legislature removed
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the HB-3 requirement for a random audit of the electronic voting machine tallies.
Ethically challenged individuals will always be drawn to high stakes political
endeavors. This is precisely why our method of vote counting must be above
reproach.
-- Read the Report. I call this broken.
( The following section was previously posted by this author to OP ED news on
1/6/08)[11]
EVEREST like the countless credible, critical, reviews of electronic voting machines
that preceded it, found numerous serious security vulnerabilities in basic electronic
voting machine system design and implementation. The academic reviewers on the
EVEREST team describe the electronic voting system put in place under Ken
Blackwell as possessing "critical security failures that render their technical controls
insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election." As part of the EVEREST project,
MicroSolved, Inc. (MSI), performed penetration tests of three voting machines
systems in use in Ohio: Premier (Diebold), ES &S and Hart Intercivic. MSI's Executive
Summary report concluded that all three vendors had failed to adopt, implement and
follow "even the most basic set of information security guidelines" used in other
industries.
MSI uncovered a myriad of common vulnerabilities and weaknesses many of which
have been known for several years and still exist in the system components. They
reported that many components lacked basic security controls such as firewalls,
antivirus and other mechanisms for protecting system integrity. [12]
Princeton computer scientist Ed Felten considered the EVEREST report to be the
scariest e-voting security report yet. He questioned how the ES&S iVotronic
touchscreen voting machine ever got certified, noting that a machine with so many
design errors must be susceptible to misrecording or miscounting votes due to
ordinary glitches that plague computer systems. He considered the iVotronic too
risky to use even if all poll workers and voters were angels. Among the many
potential touchscreen security breaches that alarmed Felten was an undocumented
backdoor function that allows a voter or poll worker to alter vote totals using a
magnet and a personal digital assistant. [13]
-- Expensive. What's an honest election worth?
How is it that the cost of moving to a more secure accountable method of vote
tabulation is now too expensive? In 2003 Blackwell was moving full speed ahead to
purchase Diebold DRE's that he explicitly did not want to have a paper trail. Blackwell
issued this directive in January of '05, the same month in which it was discovered he
had acquired Diebold stock worth almost ten-thousand dollars. [14] Blackwell and
company could not spend 100 million fast enough when purchasing incompetently
designed electronic voting machines from disreputable vendors. Ask Ken Blackwell
what sort of election official opts for voting technology that is unaccountable in the
first place. How does one explain the expenditure of $100 million of taxpayer money
on voting machines that are so insecure as to be untrustworthy in our elections? Ohio
still has never had a complete accounting of how Blackwell spent HAVA money in
2005. What we see here is unregulated, partisan, crony capitalism from the Federal
Election Commission all the way down to our County Boards of Election.
It would be a serious mistake to continue to use DRE voting machines that are
extremely fraud friendly in a time when it is widely known how insecure these voting
machines are. When a DRE voting machine is corrupted or malfunctions on election
night, votes are irretrievably lost. If our election outcomes are to be decided by
competing hackers or election insiders who infect electronic voting machines with
computer viruses then our democracy is history.
References:
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[1] Abramoff-Diebold connection: http://coloradovoter.net/bcv-archive/msg03062.html

[2] Ney opposes audit trail for DREs: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2262
[3] O'Dell fundraising letter (2003): http://rawstory.com/printstory.php?story=1570
[4] O'Dell securities fraud litigation: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5468
[5] Blackwell co-chairing Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign:
http://www.thesentinel.com/283370491126756.php
[6] Massive and unprecedented irregularities in 2004: Preserving Democracy: What Went
Wrong in Ohio, Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff (Rep. John
Conyers, Jr.), January 5, 2005. Page 4:
[7] Diebold lobbyist donates to Blackwell: http://www.wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=5012724
[8] Jeff Dean: http://www.defendersofdemocracy.com/drupal/node/54
[9] Damschroder: $10,000 donation: http://www.thesentinel.com/283370491126756.php
[10]Damschroder OAEO: http://vote.franklincountyohio.gov/boe/assets/pdf/press-releases/PR-
03092007.pdf
[11] Blakely:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_teresa_b_080106_everest_3a_the_truth_a.htm
[12]click here
[13]Felton's comments: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1236
[14]Blackwell buys Diebold:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/contentbe/dispatch/2006/04/04/20060404-A1-01.html
[15]Blackwell can't account for how all HAVA money spent;
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/081905Madsen/081905madsen.html