This post is joint work by Joshua Kroll, Ian Davey, Alex Halderman, and Ed Felten. Computer scientists, including us, have long been skeptical of electronic voting systems. E-voting systems are computers, with all of the attendant problems. If something goes wrong, can the problem be detected? Can it be fixed? Some e-voting systems are much […]
Broken Ballots
April 23, 2012 by
A important new book has just been published on the technology and policy of elections. Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count by Douglas W. Jones and Barbara Simons, covers voting systems from the 19th century to the present, with particular focus on the last two decades. The authors describe the strengths and weaknesses of the […]
Who won the Iowa primary – and does it matter from a technical perspective?
January 19, 2012 by
As Americans know, the 2012 presidential season began “officially” with the Iowa caucuses on January 3. I say “officially”, because caucuses are a strange beast that are a creation of political parties, and not government.
Regardless, the Republican results were interesting – out of about 125,000 votes cast, Mitt Romney led by eight votes over Rick Santorum, with other contenders far behind. The “official” results released today show Santorum ahead by 34 votes.
However, it’s not so simple as that.
First, there’s the matter of paper ballots. The good news is that Iowa caucuses, unlike primaries and general elections in some states, are recorded on paper. So in a case like this, there’s paper to turn to, unlike all-electronic systems where the results rely on correct software.
Second, there’s the matter of proper chain of custody. In releasing the updated results, it appears that some of the records from the caucuses cannot be located. It doesn’t matter whether the records are paper or electronic – if the chain of custody is weak (or non-existent!), then the results are at best suspect.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, “the early part of the Presidential Primary series is the only case in American politics that I know of where the preliminary election results may be actually more important than the final certified results.” [Thanks to David Jefferson for this observation.] While this is not a technical issue, it points out that our technical solutions for voting systems must recognize the reality that timely accurate results are important – timely results that are wrong aren’t helpful, and slow results that are right will be ignored.
Finally, it’s critical to realize that caucuses, like primaries in some states, are run by the parties, and not by the election professionals. Perhaps if the caucuses were run by the pros, some of these problems might not have happened.
Appeal filed in NJ voting-machines lawsuit
October 17, 2011 by
Paperless (DRE) voting machines went on trial in New Jersey in 2009, in the Gusciora v. Corzine lawsuit. In early 2010 Judge Linda Feinberg issued an Opinion that was flawed in many ways (factually and legally). But Judge Feinberg did at least recognize that DRE voting machines are vulnerable to software-based election fraud, and she ordered several baby-step remedies (improved security for voting machines and vote-tabulating computers). She retained jurisdiction for over a year, waiting for the State to comply with these remedies; the State never did, so eventually she gave up, and signed off on the case. But her retention of jurisdiction for such a long period prevented the Plaintiffs from appealing her ruling, until now.
The Appellate Division of the NJ court system agreed to hear an appeal, and the Plaintiffs (represented by Penny Venetis of Rutgers Law School and John McGahren and Caroline Bartlett of Patton Boggs) filed their appeal on October 12, 2011: you can read it here.
Plaintiffs point out that Judge Feinberg made many errors of law: she improperly permitted nonexpert defense witnesses (employees of Sequoia Voting Systems) to testify as experts, she improperly barred certain of Plaintiffs’ expert testimony, and she misapplied case law from other jurisdictions. Her misapplication of Schade v. Maryland was particularly egregious: she appropriated testimony and conclusions of Dr. Michael Shamos (defense expert witness in both the NJ and the MD cases) on topics which she had barred Dr. Shamos from testifying about in the NJ case. Worse yet, it’s quite inappropriate to use these out-of-state cases in which DREs were defended, when almost every one of those states subsequently abandoned DREs even when they won their lawsuits. In the case of Schade v. Maryland, Schade claimed that Diebold voting machines were insecure and unreliable; the Maryland court decided otherwise; but soon afterward, the legislature (convinced that the Diebold DREs were insecure and unreliable) unanimously passed a bill requiring a voter-veriable paper record.
Finally, Judge Feinberg made many errors of fact. In a nonjury civil lawsuit in New Jersey, the appeals court has authority to reconsider all factual conclusions, especially in a case such as this one where there is a clear and voluminous trial record. For example, Plaintiffs presented many kinds of evidence about how easy it is to use software-based and hardware-based methods to to steal votes on the Sequoia DRes, and the State defendants presented no witnesses at all who refuted this testimony. Here, by not taking account of these facts, Judge Feinberg made reversible errors.
Corruption Bureau assigns fox to guard henhouse
September 28, 2011 by
Recently I wrote about my discovery that someone erased evidence on an election computer in Cumberland County, NJ. After something went wrong in a Primary Election in June 2011, the Superior Court (the Hon. David E. Krell) had ordered the County Board of Elections to make the computer available for me (the Plaintiffs’ expert) to examine.
When I examined the computer on August 17, among those watching me were the County Administrator of Elections (Lizbeth Hernandez), the Director of the New Jersey Division of Elections (Robert Giles), and a Deputy Attorney General of the State of New Jersey (George Cohen). This is quite a lot of firepower for reviewing a rather small election (43 votes cast in total).
In my examination of the computer, I noticed that files and logs were erased on the day before. I notified the Court, and within a few days an IT specialist employed by the county wrote, in an affidavit, that he had been asked by the County Administrator of Elections to examine the computer the day before my own examination, and at that time he erased the files and cleared the logs.
We do not know exactly what motivated Ms. Hernandez to ask the IT specialist to fiddle with the computer. The IT specialist himself says “I was asked by Lizbeth Hernandez to determine the date the hardening process was applied to the laptop.” Why is this date important? Back in 2010, a different judge of the Superior Court (the Hon. Linda R. Feinberg) had ordered the State to secure the computers used in conduction elections by applying these “hardening guidelines.” Mr. Giles was the one responsible for making sure the State (and all its Counties) complied with this order, more than a year ago. In August 2011, did Mr. Giles ask Ms. Hernandez whether the “hardening guidelines” had been applied? Perhaps these election officials were concerned that I might discover something about late compliance, or noncompliance, with Judge Feinberg’s order.
That is, the IT specialist’s affidavit points to concern about whether Mr. Giles had effectively brought New Jersey (including Cumberland County) into compliance; by erasing the logs and temporary files, he erased evidence about compliance or noncompliance.
Judge Krell, down in Cumberland County, does not like people tampering with evidence in the cases that come before him. On September 9 he referred the possible evidence-tampering to the prosecutor, that is, to the NJ Attorney General’s office. As I described in “Will the NJ Attorney General Investigate the NJ Attorney General,” the Plaintiffs doubted that the AG would do a real investigation.
Judge Krell’s referral was directed to Christine Hoffman, Chief of the Corruption Bureau of the Office of the Attorney General. On September 20, 2011, Ms. Hoffman wrote in an official letter, “the Division of Criminal Justice will not pursue criminal charges at this time. This matter is being forwarded to your office for your review and whatever action you deem appropriate.”
And to whom is this letter addressed? To Mr. Robert Giles, Director, Division of Elections. This is like asking the fox to investigate whether proper security measures have been installed at the henhouse. Does this instill confidence in the integrity of elections in New Jersey?
Plaintiffs have asked that Judge Krell assign a special master to investigate all irregularities associated with the June 8, 2011 primary election, including the erasure of the information concerning hardening guidelines. The recent turn of events shows why an independent investigation should take place in Cumberland County.
