Our Worst Fears - Diebold WasEngineering Rigged Elections: Consumer Report Part 2

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Consumer Report: Part 2 - Problems with GEMS Central

Tabulator

Submitted by Bev Harris on Thu, 08/26/2004 - 11:38.

Investigations

This problem appears to demonstrate intent to

manipulate elections, and was installed in the program

under the watch of a programmer who is a convicted

embezzler.

 

According to election industry officials, the central

tabulator is secure, because it is protected by

passwords and audit logs. But it turns out that the

GEMS passwords can easily be bypassed, and the audit

logs can be altered and erased. Worse, the votes can

be changed without anyone knowing, including the

officials who run the election.

 

Multiple sets of books

 

(Click " read more " for the rest of this section)

 

The GEMS program runs on a Microsoft Access database.

It typically recieves incoming votes by modem, though

some counties follow better security by disconnecting

modems and bringing votes in physically.

 

GEMS stores the votes in a vote ledger, built in

Microsoft Access. Any properly designed accounting

program will allow only one set of books. You can't

enter your expense report in three different places.

All data must be drawn from the same place, and

multiple versions are never acceptable. But in the

files we examined, we found that the GEMS system

contained three sets of " books. "

 

The elections official never sees the different sets

of books. All she sees is the reports she can run:

Election summary (totals, county wide) or a " Statement

of Votes Cast " (totals for each precinct). She has no

way of knowing that her GEMS system uses a different

set of data for the detail report (used to spot check)

than it does for the election totals. The Access

database, which contains the hidden set of votes,

can't be seen unless you know how to get in the back

door -- which takes only seconds.

 

Ask an accountant: It is never appropriate to have two

sets of books inside accounting software. It is

possible to do computer programming to create two sets

of books, but dual sets of books are prohibited in

accounting, for this simple reason: Two sets of books

can easily allow fraud to go undetected. Especially if

the two sets are hidden from the user.

 

A hidden trigger The data tables in accounting

software automatically link up to each other to

prevent illicit back door entries. In GEMS, however,

by typing a two-digit code into a hidden location, you

can decouple the books, so that the voting system will

draw information from a combination of the real votes

and a set of fake votes, which you can alter any way

you see fit.

 

That's right, GEMS comes with a secret digital

" on-off " switch to link and unlink its multiple vote

tables. Someone who tests GEMS, not knowing this, will

not see the mismatched sets of books. When you put a

two-digit code into a secret location can you

disengage the vote tables, so that tampered totals

table don't have to match precinct by precinct

results. This way, it will pass a spot check -- even

with paper ballots -- but can still be rigged.

 

How and when did the double set of books get into

GEMS?

 

Black Box Voting has traced the implementation of the

double set of books to Oct. 13, 2000, shortly after

embezzler Jeffrey Dean became the senior programmer.

Dean was hired as Vice President of Research and

Development in September 2000, and his access to the

programs is well documented through internal memos

from Diebold. The double set of books appeared in GEMS

version 1.17.7.

 

Almost immediately, according to the Diebold memos,

another Diebold programmer, Dmitry Papushin, flagged a

problem with bogus votes appearing in the vote tables.

The double set of books remained, though, going

through several tweaks and refinements. From the time

Jeffrey Dean was hired in September, until shortly

before the Nov. 2000 election, GEMS went through over

a dozen changes, all retaining the new hidden vote

tables.

 

For four years, anyone who has known how to trigger

the double set of books has been able to use, or sell,

the information to anyone they want.

 

Black Box Voting Associate Director Andy Stephenson

has obtained the court and police records of Jeffrey

Dean. It is clear that he was under severe financial

stress, because the King County prosecutor was chasing

him for over $500,000 in restitution.

 

During this time, while Jeffrey Dean was telling the

prosecutor (who operated from the ninth floor of the

King County Courthouse) that he was unemployed, he was

in fact employed, with 24-hour access to the King

County GEMS central tabulator -- and he was working on

GEMS on the fifth floor of the King County Courthouse.

(Dean may now be spending his nights on the tenth

floor of the same building; after our investigations

appeared in Vanity Fair and the Seattle Times, Dean

was remanded to a work release program, and may be

staying in the lockup on in the courthouse now.)

 

Jeffrey Dean, according to his own admissions, is

subject to blackmail as well as financial pressure

over his restitution obligation. Police records from

his embezzlement arrest, which involved

" sophisticated " manipulation of computer accounting

records, report that Dean claimed he was embezzling in

order to pay blackmail over a fight he was involved

in, in which a person died.

 

So now we have someone who's admitted that he's been

blackmailed over killing someone, who pleaded guilty

to 23 counts of embezzlement, who is given the

position of senior programmer over the GEMS central

tabulator system that counts approximately 50 percent

of the votes in the election, in 30 states, both paper

ballot and touch screen.

 

And just after he is hired, multiple sets of books

appear in GEMS, which can be decoupled, so that they

don't need to match, by typing in a secret 2-digit

code in a specific location.

 

Dr. David Jefferson, technical advisor for California

voting systems, told Black Box Voting that he could

see no legitimate reason to have the double set of

books in a voting program. He surmised that it might

be incredible stupidity.

 

Dr. Jefferson should speak to Jeffrey Dean's partners

and those who worked with him. " Stupid " is not how he

is described. The descriptions we get, from Dean's

former business partner, and from others who worked

with him, are " sophisticated, " " cunning, " " very

bright, " " highly skilled, " and " a con man. "

 

This is the man who supervised the programming for

GEMS when the multiple set of books was installed.

Diebold, however, is the company that did nothing

about it.

 

Internal memos show that Dean was sent the passwords

to the GEMS 1.18.x files months after Diebold took

over the elections company. Diebold clearly did not

examine the GEMS program before selling it, or, if it

did, chose not to correct the flaws. And after

exposing this problem in 2003, Diebold still failed to

correct it.

 

Elections were run on this tamper-inviting system for

more than three years, and anyone who knew could sell

the vote-tampering secrets to anyone they wanted to,

at any time.

 

It has been a year since this report was first

printed, and Diebold has never explained any

legitimate reason for this design, which is rather

elegant and certainly is not accidental.

 

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(Go on to Part 3 for more)