Why Haven't ES&S Voting Machines Been Outlawed?
No one with any sense at all believes Alvin Greene won the South Carolina primary fairly. It doesn't pass the smell test, not even the argument that his name was at the top of the ballot and was simply chosen by its place. There was a similar situation in my district in 2008, but the winner didn't win by 17 percentage points! Any way you slice this, it stinks.
Leave aside the question of how the hapless Mr. Greene found a checking account and over $10,000 for a minute. The machines used in the South Carolina primaries are ES&S IVotronic voting machines. These machines have quite a history.
Flipping, Missing, Uncounted and Uncountable Votes
In September 2002, spot checks showed that machines failed to record any votes of Miami-Dade voters in several precincts. When the main tabulations were compared with a backup, discrepancies emerged. In October, 2002, Texas voters reported that the vote flipped from one party's candidate to the other. In May 2003, software bugs invalidated votes in a North Miami Beach runoff election. The results could not be audited, recounted or certified. In January, 2004, ES&S machines recorded 134 undervotes in an election where the winner received 12 more votes than the loser. The loser requested a recount but because the votes were cast on electronic voting machines, there was no paper trail. Election officials determined that no recount was required. (VerifiedVoting.org) In 2008, voters complain that ES&S IVotronic machines flip votes from Democratic candidates to Republican. Also in 2008, ES&S machines added 5,000 phantom votes to the total count in Rapid City, South Dakota.
ES&S IVotronic Machines Proven Vulnerable to Hacks, Viruses, and Failures
A security evaluation of ES&S voting systems was performed at uPenn in 2007 (PDF) at the request of Jennifer Brunner. The 13-page evaluation should have served as notice to remove all ES&S machines immediately. While numerous problems were reported, I want to focus on two that could have affected the outcome of the South Carolina primary.
- Altering data via the touchscreen interface
This is perhaps the most serious practical threat to the iVotronic firmware. As discussed in Section 4.2, errors in the iVotronic’s PEB input processing code allow anyone with access to the PEB slot on the face of the terminal (including a voter) to load malicious software that takes complete control over the iVotronic’s processor. Once loaded, this software can alter the terminal firmware, change recorded votes, mis-record future votes, and so on throughout the election day and in future elections.
- Viral compromise
A compromised iVotronic can modify a PEB such that it carries a malicious payload which infects other iVotronics on which it is subsequently used. This iVotronic to iVotronic propagation can happen, for example, while a master PEB is being used to run Logic-and-Accuracy tests on the iVotronic terminals being used in a particular election.
Now keep those two possibilities in mind while I outline the specific irregularities that have come to light in South Carolina.
