The Alaska Democratic Party is trying to get access to the electronic voting files (as distinct from printouts) from the 2004 election, to verify the results and clear up apparent discrepancies. The state Division of Elections refuses to turn them over, arguing that the “data format” (what is that, exactly? computer geeks, please help) belongs to Diebold, not the state.
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/17302.html
Is there any justification for this?
A data format is the way in which the data is structured, not the data itself. In other words, if I have a file that allots 20 characters for the last name, and 16 for the first, that’s the format. The actual last and first names themselves are not. This is very simplified, as a typical format has header info, etc., but that’s basically what it is, the layout of the data, not the data itself.
Nope, none whatsoever. Even if they had some super secret proprietary data format (they don’t), or even used a proprietary database engine (they don’t), it’s trivial to convert data from one format to another. I can take data from just about any format and get it to you in a file that you could easily open and read in Notepad in about 5 minutes.
In fact, if the powers that be have a representative here, feel free to have them send me the .mdb file. I’ll convert it for free. 
I’m not sure about your first to claims here; Diebold’s lawyer says otherwise. And anyway the Democrats don’t want to accept data that’s been converted; they are saying that only the raw data in it’s native format is acceptable. They don’t want printouts, and they don’t wanna accept data converted to Excel.
From one of the links:
Sure. Contractual obligations. From the same link, just a couple lines down:
So the State of Alaska signed a contract saying that the raw election data - the actual data that shows how people voted - can never be publicly reviewed?
That’s insane.
This is part of the reason why, irrespective of corporate political affiliations, it’s pretty damn stupid for a government to outsource something as critical as the voting process to a private firm with proprietary rights over the data it collects. The results of the electoral process ought to be as transparent as possible.
I’m all for public-private partnerships and innovation and efficiency and cost-saving and all that, but this is an area where accountability must trump every other consideration.
Why is it important for them to see it in the original, proprietary format?
Can you provide a cite for the claim that they are not using a proprietary data format or a proprietary databse engine? They claim they are.
Based on what I vaguely recall of the breach a couple of years back, Diebold is either using an MS Access or an MS SQL Server backend.
Hmm… here it is:
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/1,61243-1.html
Now, I suppose it’s concievable that they’re written an entirely new RDMS from scratch in the intervening couple of years, the fact that they initially used frickin’ Access to run a production, high-volume system where integrity and reliability were absolutely critical, makes me doubt that they’ve got the smarts to do it.
I mean, they don’t need Oracle or DB2, but Postgres is free, y’all.
And while Access is technically proprietary, it’s owned by Microsoft, not Diebold.
And the answer to Bricker’s first question: because any amount of monkeying with the data, either deliberately or due to bugs, can be done at any step in the process. In order to track a particular record through the system and do any meaningful kind of audit, you’ve got to start with as close to the original record as possible.
Personally, I think they should open source the entire process, or at least have some kind of equivalent of SOX for the electronic voting industry, to make vendor officers criminally liable for security breaches and other screwups.
Seems to me that a subpoena, akin to that used by the federal government in the Google case, would be in order. Proprietary format? As I found out recently in a GQ thread, a simple protective order serves to remedy that.
Why not just copyright or patent it?
So the Alaska Dems should be asking Bill Gates for this stuff?!
Because that would make the structure publically accessible. They’re trying to claim trade secrets; as I said above, I should think that can be gotten around by essentially putting in place a non-disclosure agreement (until and unless some crime – such as election fraud – was determined).
However, thier claim is seriously undermined by this tidbit:
If true, aren’t there legal precedents that say it is no longer a trade secret (and that their claim is therefore null and void)? Of course, that’s only if it’s true; again, I’d think a subpoena would be necessary to move this forward…
Since it’s supposed to be proprietary, I won’t post links, but from what is available out there it seems to be a three table Access database. There is nothing secret, complex, or proprietary about an Access database. Any competitor of Diebold’s who would want their Access layouts already has them, as anyone who has worked with Access can tell you, it’s not hard to see the table structures if you have the .mdb. In fact, I’m a bit scared about Diebold’s capabilities if they thought Access was an acceptable solution for a high transaction environment.
A much larger problem to me isn’t that the Dems aren’t getting the layouts, it’s that the layouts aren’t open to the public in the first place. Based on this, my understanding is that in the voting world of Diebold, we get no paper trail, no source code verification, and now we can’t even see the actual electronic trail that was supposed to be the reason we didn’t need a paper trail? Bullshit. Someone either has something to hide, or wants to preserve the right to hide it in the future and get away with it.
I’m not really much of an open source fanboi, but this just screams of corruption, and should either be completely open sourced, or at least be open to the public for peer review. That goes for both the source code and the structure. Hell, for all the public knows, the three tables in question are Voters, Votes, and Adjusted Votes.
Does anyone in this forum truly think that any part of our election process, how it works, the full results, etc., should be closed to the public?
According to all of the information that is out there, they are lying. If they’re not lying, I’m more worried. Not only is this not rocket science, it’s not even data architect science. I know self-proclaimed Luddites that can read Access database structures. Access intentionally exposes the structures, which is why this boggles my mind.
With the existing hesitation, that’s quite understandable. That’s why I was offering to do the conversion for them, as I probably wouldn’t trust Diebold to do it at this point either, if I was them.
Do you want those sort of things to be protected via contract at all in regards to the election process? If this keeps up, George Soros should create an electronic voting machine company and undercut Diebold on prices. I’m betting we’d have laws to open up pretty fucking fast at that point.
Because of the hesitation to provide it in the first place. Does taking the fifth make the average juror more or less suspicious of the person on the stand? The problem to me here is that the company shouldn’t even have that option, as that has fraud potential written all over it. Aren’t we trying to reduce fraud in the process?
Not without a mod saying it’s okay. It’s pretty freely available, but I’m not going to put the board in the middle of this without preapproval. Here is one place in which the claim is made without links to the actual file formats themselves, but other than the actual formats, I don’t know how to prove it. It’s not like Diebold is wanting to admit to the public that they use an old version of Jet that was never meant for an environment like the state election process.
I find this question a bit odd considering that you just posted the following in another thread:
If they’re not even allowed to look, they sure won’t find it. Want to explain the disconnect to me?
Diebold’s machines, contrary to all their claims, seem to allow any random shmoe to alter their results in a way that’s then completely undetectable after the fact, at least in terms of the code. They make it possible for a single person with a single contact with the machine, to throw an election one way or another… leaving no evidence and no way to verify. That’s a great idea, right!
What’s even worse is that that single person doesn’t even have to be technically skilled. It would be harder to find someone who couldn’t change votes than someone who could.
Hey, DMC, is there now functionality in Access that allows one to embed formulae and such within the structure (y’know, like SQL statements)? I haven’t used Access (or done any database programming) in about a decade, so I’m not familiar with any recent advances in database tech.
It just seems to me that that’s the only reason for keeping a structure secret (not that what should be a simple tabulator deserves secret status in the first place). Seems to me more likely that they are either corrupt or simply incompetent (and in fear of being exposed). After all, it’s not rocket surgery…