Processing Votes by Mail

In his tweets (see my previous post), President Trump wrote “go to your Polling Place to see whether your Mail In Vote has been Tabulated (Counted). … If it has not been Counted, VOTE”

This reflects a common misunderstanding of the way vote by mail ballots are handled. There is a distinction between processing vote by mail ballots and counting the votes on them.

Processing a vote by mail ballot has two basic parts:

1. The voter signature on the envelope is validated, and that the voter has voted is recorded. This can start 29 days before the election ([1], §15101(a)).
2. The envelopes are opened, the ballots are removed and prepared to be counted, for example by being scanned. The ballots are not actually counted at this time. ([1], §15101(b)(1)).

Then, the votes are counted. These counts cannot be released until 8 p.m. on Election Day. ([1], §15101(b)(1), §15101(c)).

So when you go to a polling station, your vote will not have been counted yet, because it can't be counted until the polls close.

Reference

1. California Elections Code Division 15, Chapter 2. Vote by Mail Ballot Processing (2020). URL: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=ELEC&division=15.&title=&part=&chapter=2.&article=.

Don't Vote Twice

President Trump has been railing against voting by mail, claiming it is very easy to commit voter fraud with it. But he supports absentee voting, saying it is much safer. This is very confusing, as there is absolutely no difference in the way ballots from, voting by mail and voting absentee are handled. Indeed, in California, the Election Code used to say “The absentee ballot shall be available to any registered voter” ([1], §3003), and “After marking the ballot, the absentee voter shall … return the ballot by mail” ([1], §3017(a)) or in other ways. Now the Election Code says “The vote by mail ballot shall be available to any registered voter” ([2], §3003), and “After marking the ballot, the vote by mail voter shall … return the ballot by mail” ([2], §3017(a)). Note that the word “absentee” was simply replaced by the words “vote by mail.”

On Wednesday, September 2, President Trump suggested people who vote by mail should go to the polls on Election Day and see if their mailed-in ballot has been counted; if not, he said they should vote again to ensure their vote is counted [3,4]. He repeated this in a series of tweets (see below).

There is a huge problem President Trump didn’t mention — it is illegal in every state in the United States of America to vote twice. And this will be detected.

Here’s why. A “voting location” is a location under control of election officials, where you can cast a ballot. Every voting location has a list of voters who can vote at that voting location. This information is kept in a poll book. So, let’s say you voted by mail. There will be a notation in the poll book that you requested a vote-by-mail ballot. You will be told this; and if you insist on voting anyway, you will be given a provisional ballot. This is used when it is unclear whether a voter can vote, or can vote at that voting location. The ballot is a regular ballot, but it is put into an envelope, which in turn is put into another envelope, and the name of the voter and the reason why they voted provisionally are written directly on the outer envelope. The envelope is then put into the ballot box.

When the votes are counted, the provisional ballots are counted separately. Before a provisional ballot is counted, election judges look at the name and reason, and determine if the vote should be counted. If the voter has already voted by mail, and the ballot received, the judges will disallow the provisional ballot. Otherwise, the provisional ballot will be counted, and when the mail-in ballot arrives, it will not be.

Now, if you did as President Trump suggests, the election officials will know you tried to vote twice, once by mail and once in person because your name will be on the envelope in which you returned the vote by mail ballot and on the envelope of the provisional ballot . You can expect this being reported to the local prosecutors, who take this sort of thing very seriously (see [5], the Ohio cases of McMillan and Richardson, for example).

Rather than risk arrest, if you are concerned enough about your ballot being delivered on time by the Postal Service to do as President Trump suggests, just don’t mail your ballot. Instead, if your jurisdiction allows, take it to the voting location and, rather than voting there, hand it to a poll worker. Most jurisdictions have other locations where you can safely drop off ballots, such as drop boxes or the elections office. It's just as effective as voting in person, and has the side benefit of being perfectly legal.

One other note. Many of us (including me) have been testing voting systems for 20 years or more. We never do any kind of testing during an election because of the risk of corrupting votes and committing an illegal act. So President Trump’s statement that this is a good way to test election security is advice that no professional tester would ever follow.

References

1. California Elections Code Chapter 1. Absentee Application and Voting Procedures. (2005). URL: https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2005/elec/3000-3024.html.
2. California Elections Code Division 3. Vote by Mail Voting, New Resident, and New Citizen Voting (2020). URL: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=ELEC&division=3.&title=&part=&chapter=1.&article=.
3. M. Haberman and S. Saul, “Trump Encourages People in North Carolina to Vote Twice, Which Is Illegal,” The New York Times (Sep. 2, 2020); URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/us/politics/trump-people-vote-twice.html.
4. J. Oliphant, “Trump Encourages Supporters to Try to Vote Twice, Sparking Uproar,” U.S. News and World Report (Sep. 3, 2020); URL: https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2020-09-03/trump-says-north-carolina-voters-should-vote-twice-once-by-mail-once-in-person.
5. “A Sampling of Election Fraud Cases from Across the Country,” The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC, USA. URL: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/pacei-voterfraudcases.pdf.

Computer Security: Art and Science, Second Edition

The second edition of my book “Computer Security: Art and Science” is scheduled to be published on November 30 (this Thursday!).

My web page for the book is http://nob.cs.ucdavis.edu/book/book-aands2/index.html.

The publisher’s is https://www.informit.com/store/computer-security-art-and-science-9780321712332.

What a long, interesting trip it’s been (to paraphrase the Grateful Dead) …

Special! Black Friday Sale!

The publisher has a pre-order special. Until November 26, you can get 35% off on 1, and 55% off for 2 or more using code BF2018 at http://informit.com/blackfriday.

About Those Post-Election Audits ...

After the election, efforts to recount votes in Michigan and Pennsylvania were denied on the grounds there is no evidence that the electronic voting systems were hacked, the basis of the request. Independent of this, in light of evidence uncovered by the U.S. intelligence agencies involving Russia’s hacking of election-related systems, questions about the integrity of the election have been raised.

To my mind, the concern about attackers compromising election systems is important but not entirely on the mark. Questioning the integrity of the election does not require suspicion of attackers compromising the electronic voting systems. The poor quality of the software on these voting systems is sufficient to raise concerns. We have multiple analyses showing this. I don’t understand why the lawsuits did not emphasize this.

A claim that electronic voting system software is so poor that the results of the election could be incorrect requires some substantiation. Here are three specific, documented problems that could cause the results of an election to be compromised. I was on the teams that found these.

1. Failure to install security updates. These updates fix vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit to take over the computer. They may delete or alter information. Clearly this can alter the results of an election.In 2004, Maryland commissioned a study of the Diebold AccuVote-TS systems it would be using in the next election. The study, conducted by RABA Technologies, “identified fifteen additional Microsoft patches that have not been installed on the servers. In addition, the servers lack additional measures (all considered best practice) for defense such as the use of firewall antivirus programs as well as the application of least privilege, i.e. turning off the services that are unused or not needed.” [1, p. 21]. The team used one of these unpatched vulnerabilities to gain complete control of the vote-counting system in under 30 minutes.
2. Failure to check for integer overflow. When computers count, they cannot handle numbers that are too big. As a simple example, consider a type of computer called a “16 bit system”. Such a computer can represent the numbers 0 to 65,535 inclusive, but no others. If you add 1 to 65,535, the result will “wrap around” to be 0. Checking for this is crucial in an electronic voting system to avoid errors. In 2006, the California Voting Systems Technology Assessment Advisory Board analyzed the Diebold AccuVote Optical Scanner (version 1.96.6). The analysis team found that “the AV-OS source code has numerous places where it manipulates vote counters as 16-bit values without first checking them for overflow, so that if more than 65,535 votes are cast, then the vote counters will wrap around and start counting up from 0 again” [2, p. 18]. The source code did not accept more than 65,535 ballots, but if the vote counter started at any non-zero number (for example, 1), overflow could occur.
   Similarly, the report on the analysis of the ES&S iVotronic electronic voting system (version 8.0.1.2) says the “software also contained array out-of-bounds errors, integer overflow vulnerabilities, and other security holes” [3, p. 57].
3. Incorrect handling of error conditions. A mark of good programming is that, when something goes wrong, the program logs the error and takes action to minimize the impact of the error. The occurrence of the error should be clearly identified and not create problems beyond those immediately resulting from the failure.

In the analysis of the ES&S iVotronic electronic voting system (version 8.0.1.2), a team of forensic analysts identified a problem of this type. These systems have two types of Personal Electronic Ballots, a Voter PEB and a Supervisor PEB. When a voter is to vote, a Voter PEB is inserted into the iVotronic to set it up for that voter. The PEB is then removed and the voter votes. If the iVotronic has a particular configuration, the software then queries the PEB to get its serial number — and, as the PEB has been removed, the software records the serial number as 0, rather than that off the PEB actually used. As a result, the voter’s votes are recorded correctly, but the PEB’s serial number is recorded incorrectly as 0. The log shows a successful vote with a PEB having serial number 0, which is not possible and raises the question of whether the voter’s votes were recorded correctly. But the problem is not recording votes; the problem is simply recording a serial number. [3, §6.2.1.2]

All of these relate to security because the analyses were done in the context of examining the security of the systems. All arise from poor programming.

The point is that, without a thorough analysis of the current software, we must assume the software has many problems with robustness. Thus it is not necessary to claim that an attack may have occurred to assert the results are suspect; the evidence from the software that has been analyzed gives one ample reason to assert the results are suspect.

The RABA report and the VSTAAB reports sum this situation up:

“True security can only come via established security models, trust models, and software engineering processes that follow these models; we feel that a pervasive code rewrite would be necessary to instantiate the level of best practice security necessary to eliminate the risks we have outlined in the previous sections.” [1, p. 23]

“This is a good example of the need for defensive programming. If code had been written to check for wrap-around immediately before every arithmetic operation on any vote counter, Hursti’s technique of loading the vote counter with a large number just less than 65536 would not have worked.” [2, p. 18]

So, what can (and should) be done? That depends on the requirements of an election. In the United States, everyone agrees on at least three of these:

1. Accuracy: the final tallies should reflect the votes that the voters intended to cast.
2. Anonymity of the ballot: No one should be able to link a ballot to an individual.
3. Secrecy of the ballot: No one should be able to prove to another how he or she voted.

If we are to use computers to record, tally, and report the votes, we need software that is robust, reliable, easy for voters to cast their votes on, and easy for the operators to operate. Note that the casting of votes may not involve a computer. The voter may mark a paper ballot, and then the ballot scanned. The scanning, and resulting electronic representation of the ballot, would then be used by computers.

A fourth requirement that is rarely stated explicitly, but is implicit, is that of transparency. This requirement basically says that the process of the election must be public, and that a voter can observe the entire election process, except for watching an individual voter marking his or her votes. An implication of this is credibility — the election must not only meet its requirements, but it must also be seen to meet the requirements. And here’s the rub.

When we say “transparency”, transparent to whom? Voters? Election officials? The vendors of electronic voting equipment? Computer scientists? Politicians? The public at large? The answer to this question will control many facets of the election process that affect its credibility. The reason is the use of computers.

Contrast how voting occurs on paper with that on an electronic voting machine (sometimes called a “Direct Recording Electronic”, or DRE, machine). The observer, standing in the polling station, can watch the voter being handed a ballot, going into a voting booth, coming out of the booth with the ballot in hand, and then inserting it into the ballot box. The observer knows that the voter’s votes were recorded on the ballot, and the ballot is in the box that will be carried to Election Central (if she has any doubt, she can follow the ballot box to Election Central). With a DRE, the observer can watch the voter being given the access code to use the DRE, the voter going to that DRE, and the voter leaving the DRE. But she cannot see the ballot being put into a transport mechanism that will be taken to Election Central. She can certainly see the flash cards or the voting system being taken to Election Central; but she cannot tell whether the ballot records what the voter thinks it records, or even if the ballot is there. She must trust the software. This is why robust, well-written software is so critical to the election process. A similar consideration applies to the counting of the ballots at Election Central.

Paper trails that show the votes cast (called “Voter-Verified Paper Trails” or VVPATs) are not sufficient for two reasons. First, VVPATs are not used for counting. They are used to validate results of the voting systems when required. This occurs during the canvass or when a recount is conducted. Thus, the VVPATs and the electronic results are rarely compared. Second, there is evidence that most voters do not review the VVPAT before they cast their vote, so there is no way to know whether the votes recorded on the VVPAT are the votes that the voter intended to cast. So while VVPATs help if voters check them, they still do not add transparency because they are not used to do the initial counting.

If the target of the transparency trusts the electronic voting equipment, then the above process is transparent. If one does not, then the entire system must be available to those for whom the transparency is intended. It certainly is for the vendors; but what about others? In the past, it has also been made available for analysis to specific individuals when the state mandated that those individuals have access (usually because of some problem, or for testing). But this access required that a non-disclosure agreement, or something similar, be signed. The electronic voting equipment was not available to others, like voters.

So, if the election process is to be transparent to voters, all of the electronic voting equipment used in that process must be accessible to voters. The voters can then inspect the hardware, software, and all other components to assure themselves (to whatever degree of assurance they desire) that the requirements are met.

This includes the software that runs the equipment. It does not matter who creates the software so long as it is “open source”, i.e. available to anyone who wants to see it. But that is not enough. It is possible to corrupt hardware, or ancillary components such as scanners or keyboards, and the voters must be able to assure themselves that this will not happen (again, to whatever degree of assurance they require), so that too must be open source, and the manner in which everything is assembled to create the systems used in the election process be public and precise enough so others can verify it. Note voters may need to work with specialists to make this determination. The point is, they can do so, and choose the specialists they trust rather than rely on specialists selected by others.

By the way, the term “open source”, as used in the technical community, has many meanings. All uses require that the source code be available to anyone who wants it. The differences lie in the way that software can be used. For example, must changes to open source software be open source? Under a license called the GPL, yes; under a license called the BSD license, no. This distinction is irrelevant for transparency, and hence for our purposes. What matters is the software used during the election process can be examined by disinterested parties.

Elections are the cornerstone of our republic. All aspects of the process by which they are conducted should be open to those most affected by it, the voters. Currently, it is not, as the software involved in elections is closed source, and the details of the electronic voting systems (and the systems themselves) are not available for public scrutiny. I hope in the future this changes, so that questions about the voting systems raised in the last 4 presidential elections can be settled and, ideally, avoided.

Acknowledgement.Thanks to Candice Hoke for pointing out that the legal cases involved attacks on the electronic voting systems, and not that they might produce incorrect results due to other problems.

References.

1. RABA Innovative Solution Cell, “Trusted Agent Report Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting System”, RABA Technologies LLC, Columbia, MD 21045 (Jan. 2004). Available at http://nob.cs.ucdavis.edu/~bishop/notes/2004-RABA/index.html
2. D. Wagner, D. Jefferson, M. Bishop, C. Karlof, and N. Sastry, “Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuBasic Interpreter”, Technical Report, Voting Systems Technology Assessment Advisory Board, Office of the Secretary of State of California, Sacramento, CA 95814 (Feb. 2006). Available at http://nob.cs.ucdavis.edu/~bishop/notes/2006-inter/index.html
3. A. Yasinsac, D. Wagner, M. Bishop, T. Baker, B. de Medeiros, G. Tyson, M. Shamos, and M. Burmester, “Software Review and Security Analysis of the ES&S iVotronic 8.0.1.2 Voting Machine Firmware”, Security and Assurance in Information Technology Laboratory, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL (Feb. 2007). Available at http://nob.cs.ucdavis.edu/~bishop/notes/2007-fsusait-1/index.html

Some Thoughts on the Recent Election

To all who are upset at the results of the Presidential election, remember this, from Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

And to those upset with the failure of California’s Proposition 62 (to eliminate the death penalty in the state), more from Lord of the Rings about Gollum:

“No, and I don’t want to,” said Frodo. “I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.”

“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

Peace.

Oh, Those Presidential Debates!

I didn’t see either the first presidential debate, but I did see the second and third. I also saw several of the debates for the primaries.

I’d love to see the debates restructured so all candidates sat in soundproof booths that are clear so the audience can see them. They would be wired for sound so the candidates could hear one another and the moderator. Each booth would have a microphone. The microphones would be off unless the candidates was supposed to be speaking, for example to answer a question from a moderator or the audience. So if one candidates were answering, the others could not interrupt.

I think that would make the debates much saner — one candidate could not talk over the other or snipe at them until their turn.

And at least it would make the debates easier to follow!

Customers as Shareholders

Here’s an idea for improving customer service.

The goal of American, and other, companies is to keep their stockholders happy. Paying executives large bonuses, automating as many aspects of their work as possible, and outsourcing functions are all attempts to increase the revenue that stockholders receive. Customer service is simply one of these functions. As long as the customers come, it does not matter how poor customer service is. When customers cease to come, then the company will try to improve its customer service.

This is particularly pernicious when few vendors supply a needed service. Consider air travel. Currently, three airlines — American, Delta, and United — dominate the U.S. airline market All treat the customers as revenue generators, not human beings. The width of seats has shrunk to the point where some people cannot fly coach for medical reasons; the pricing structure of tickets is incomprehensible; and the customer bears the brunt of any problems. Witness United’s and Delta’s recent computer breakdowns. The result: customers could rebook without charge (the airlines emphasized the latter). Now, if a customer misses a meeting because the flight is delayed, the airline does not provide any compensation. Rather one-sided — and the customer can rarely move his business to another airline, because all of the airlines operate the same way. The customer produces money. Complaints? Doesn’t affect their shareholders, so they won’t do anything.

Improving customer service requires an incentive. The bottom line is keeping stockholders happy, and this usually (but not always) involves profits. If profits fall, the money stockholders make falls, and they will become discontent — and possibly change company management, or dump their stock, causing the price of the stock to drop, thereby hurting the company’s financial position. If profits fall, companies will try to find the cause and correct it. So, tie customer service to stockholder satisfaction. The belief that improving customer service improves revenue, and therefore stockholder satisfaction, simply is not working, especially when the company is a monopoly or near-monopoly. This suggests making the tie more direct.

Here’s the idea: make the customer a shareholder. For example, when I fly on (say) Delta, I receive a share of Delta’s voting stock. If I fly often, I get more stock; indeed, this could be handled like a “frequent flier” (loyalty) program. Now, I have a direct voice in the overall management of the company because I can vote my stock at a shareholder’s meeting. Further, I can band together with others of like mind to make our stock be a larger block and hence increase the strength of our voices.

Now as a shareholder, the company will want to keep me happy; and it can do so not just by revenue, but also by making my flights more comfortable. And to do so it will have to reverse the trend of poor customer service.