BBV: Just Posted - Actual Accenture Voter List Software

[IPSecure]

I have found and posted the actual voter list software used widely throughout the USA (TN, WI, PA, CO, KS...) for Accenture voter registration and voter histories. I located the files on a magnetic backup tape of the hard drive of a county elections IT employee, part of a 120-gig set of discovery files.

The Accenture voter registration / voter history software is highly problematic, and has been reported switching voter parties in Colorado, and losing voter histories in Tennessee. Although it is now widely known that Accenture voter list software gets it wrong, just WHY the program misreports voter information so often has never been explained. I am hoping that by releasing this software to the public, it may shed light on what's really going on with our voter registration systems.

I also posted a Tennessee file with work orders and release notes which shows the Accenture software has a history of tripling votes in certain ("random") voter histories, going back to 2004. Except it is not random: Other files I discovered prove it is with primarily suburban Republican precincts that votes are somehow being recorded twice and sometimes three times for certain voters in the voter history report, and this didn't just happen in 2004; it also happened in the 2008 presidential primary and in May and August 2010, and according to election commission notes in Shelby County, also in the 2012 presidential primary.

Computer buffs, have at it. Much source code exists within the structure because it is built on MS Access. I do not read source code, though I can see some structural problems with the software (for example, it allows political party ID to be set differently from one precinct to another).

Here's the download link - http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/7659/82111.html

As a followup on our last story: The issue of 11,000 disappearing voter histories in Tennessee has now been assigned to a special master for investigation, and the state of Tennessee has officially announced that it has halted further voter purges.

(Permission to republish granted.)


http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

[RonRules]

Possibly some even bigger stuff coming. I just have to get the results confirmed.

Stay tuned.

[ghengis86]

Nice find. I don't know why people accept electronic voting.

Paper ballots, in a sealed box, opened on election night and counted in public, results posted online for each precinct. Any person should then be able to tally the votes and get the exact same count as the official number.

It only matters who counts the votes and as demonstrated repeatedly, electronic voting machines are horrible

[RonRules]

6/2012 - ACCENTURE HITS BBV WITH A CEASE and DESIST!

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/82118.html?1340555244

[RonRules]

And that's not the BIG stuff I was talking about in the above post.

[RonRules]

Posted on Sunday, June 24, 2012 - 7:03 am:
Amazingly, Accenture, which sold its crap-on-a-stick high-school sophomoric completely insecure malfunctioning voter registration software to a bunch of states, so unsuccessfully that Colorado refused to pay and others, like Wisconsin and Shelby County, bought out the source code in order to try to bandaid it into a functional system, has decided to issue a DMCA protective order against Black Box Voting for exposing its flawed software.

Last time a voting system company did a DMCA takedown notice (Diebold, in 2004) it got socked with punitive charges for abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, trying to use it to block distribution of material clearly published in the public interest.

If you want a copy of the voter registration software I posted Thursday, might as well get it -- and mirror it, torrent it, dropbox it, or whatever -- today. I'll probably pull it down by June 27, not because their claim is valid, but because there are higher priorities for spending my time during this election season and thanks to Slashdot and some pals in Europe, this software has now been widely mirrored elsewhere.

Here is the DMCA issued to Black Box Voting:

Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 17:17:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Rackspace AUP Team
Subject: Please Review Immediately - DMCA

Hello,

We have received a notice pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"�) from Accenture Global Services Ltd regarding certain content appearing at the above-referenced website (the "Website"�). A copy of this notice has been sent to you via email at [redacted]. This company alleges that material posted on your company's website infringes on their copyright. Please remove the content claimed to be infringing from the Website and confirm to me in writing that you have done so by 8:00 A.M. Central Time, 6/27/2012. If the allegedly infringing content is not removed and/or I have not received your written confirmation by that time, Rackspace will suspend network access to the server(s) hosting the Website.

Please note that you may provide a counter notification, stating that the posted material is not infringing the alleged copyright, in accordance with the provisions of 17 U.S.C. §512(g)(3) to Rackspace's designated agent:

Director of Compliance
Rackspace Hosting

(Note that Rackspace is only doing what it's required to do. They are a superb web hosting company, and have helped keep the Black Box Voting sites up and secure for many years now.)

After releasing it into the wild, we can all see that the system is hardly worth the $20 MILLION Accenture tried to charge the state of Colorado, with equally exhorbitant fees hitting taxpayers in other states and counties.

There are multiple possible explanations for how this system doubles and triples reported votes for some voters (oddly, in White Republican suburbs), and for why it likes to alter people's political party and erase their voter history.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS ON ACCENTURE'S VOTER REGISTRATION SYSTEM

Accenture's "ESM" voter registration / voter history system is really just a bunch of Microsoft Access tables riddled with faulty joins, lacking referential integrity, and also open to malicious play using easily written hidden Visual Basic or Java scripts residing on any computer linked into it. It cannot be made secure without completely redesigning the architecture.

Watch "Hacking Democracy" (search it on YouTube) for a real-life example of how simple it is to bypass all passwords using a VBA script, to implement anything you want with hidden code commands in systems built on this platform, which is also used for the Diebold GEMS system.

Yah, so where is "Accenture Global Services" based out of anyway? Cayman Islands? Or is it now another tax-evading corporate secrecy haven, used not only to avoid paying taxes but to prevent the American public from knowing anything about the creepy white men who control corporate ownership.

PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED, WITH LINK TO http://www.blackboxvoting.org

POSTSCRIPT: Accenture was located in Bermuda; according to the Wall Street Journal, due to the current US crackdown on tax dodging corporations, Accenture has now relocated to Dublin, Ireland.

Download, seed and distribute:
https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7372424/Accenture_software_for_voter_registration

I'm seeding it too and 6 people have downloaded the whole thing. Even if Bev has to bring hers down, let's make sure tha software is widely available.

[IPSecure]

Posted on Sunday, June 24, 2012 - 7:03 am:

Amazingly, Accenture, which sold its crap-on-a-stick high-school sophomoric completely insecure malfunctioning voter registration software to a bunch of states, so unsuccessfully that Colorado refused to pay and others, like Wisconsin and Shelby County, bought out the source code in order to try to bandaid it into a functional system, has decided to issue a DMCA protective order against Black Box Voting for exposing its flawed software.

Gotta love Bev, telling it like it is...

[ghengis86]

Yeah, this is some good shit. Expose these fuckers for the scum that they are.

[RonRules]

There are 95 counties in Tennessee. According to the Secretary of State, Shelby County has the 2nd highest number of purged active voters!

http://www.tn.gov/sos/election/data/reg/2011-12.pdf

3,998 active voters were purged from their database. I wonder how much effect that Accenture program had on voter purging.

[RonRules]

This story is making the front cover page of the Brad Blog:

http://bradblog.com/
BBV Told to Remove Accenture's 'Crap-On-a-Stick' Voter Registration Software From Website

Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org sends out the following notice this morning...

Amazingly, Accenture, which sold its crap-on-a-stick high-school sophomoric completely insecure malfunctioning voter registration software to a bunch of states, so unsuccessfully that Colorado refused to pay and others, like Wisconsin and Shelby County, bought out the source code in order to try to bandaid it into a functional system, has decided to issue a cease and desist against Black Box Voting for exposing its flawed software to the public.
Last time a voting system company did a DMCA take-down notice (Diebold, in 2004) it got socked with punitive charges for abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, trying to use it to block distribution of material clearly published in the public interest.

If you want a copy of the voter registration software I posted Thursday, might as well get it right now --- and mirror it, torrent it, dropbox it, or whatever. I'll probably pull it down by June 27, not because their claim is valid, but because there are higher priorities for spending my time during this election season and thanks to Slashdot and some pals in Europe, this software has now been widely mirrored elsewhere.

The full takedown notice is here. The "highly problematic" Accenture voter registration software --- used by TN, WI, PA, CO, KS and others --- is still posted here, as of now if you'd like to download it, poke around into some of the source code, and/or mirror it on your site.

Other than "crap-on-a-stick high-school sophomoric completely insecure [and] malfunctioning", Harris previously described the software this way: "This voter registration and voter history system has been widely criticized --- in Colorado, where it reportedly assigned voters who are Republicans as Democrats, and vice versa, and in Tennessee where it has been proven to lose voter histories."

[RonRules]

Here's an Access expert take on the issue:

Hi Bev,

I've been a long-time supporter of BBV, and am fully aware of the futility of attempting to create a secure database system with Access. I put together the first Access Security FAQ that has been posted on Microsoft's web site for many years as well as other topics related to database security vulnerabilities.

The use of Access, with its well-known vulnerabilities and lack of auditing capabilities, can only have been deliberate and intentional. There has been code floating around the Internet for years that enables anyone capable of using a search engine to crack Access security. And when they break in, there is no way to detect the intrusion. All of these things are well-known to developers around the world, and have been since the mid-1990's.

If someone knowingly certifies shoddy steel when building a bridge, and that bridge later collapses, then they are criminally liable. If someone attempts to certify election software built on top of Microsoft Access as secure or robust, then they should also be held liable. No responsible public official would buy such software if they knew of its inherent and unfixable vulnerabilities unless they were participating in the fraud and hoped to benefit.

I don't even need to download Accenture's code to know that it's a piece of crap -- that's a given when its built on Access. I'm not slamming Access per se, it has its place in the business world as a very useful tool for small database applications that sit behind a firewall, but it is definitely criminal to assert that it will be secure or safe outside of a secured environment where you cannot prevent unauthorized access, audit intrusions, or guarantee the chain of custody of the .mdb file.

I'd be happy to testify to this, and can help you round up other Access experts, one of whom still works for Microsoft, if you need additional expert testimony. Best regards,

MC
Former Access Security expert, MVP, & former Microsoft employee

[RonRules]

I think Accenture really goofed the floof here. There were other consulting companies that modified that software after Accenture (CMIS for example).

Considering the seriousness of the allegations, Accenture should have simply ignored Bev's posting. If asked, they should have replied: It's not our software anymore, other people have modified it.

[donnay]

Gotta love Bev, telling it like it is...

I love Bev. I had the honor of working with her in the recount in New Hampshire 2008. She is a really classy lady!

[RonRules]

I'll be posting some stuff related to this:
"Note that one of the service items reveals that it was tripling votes for "random" voters in the 2004 primary. Files I have obtained show that it doubled or tripled votes in the 2008 primary, and also in the May 2010 and Aug 2010 primaries in Tennessee. However: It is not random. It only appears to be random when voters are sorted by fields other than precinct/voter ID. In fact, it is doubling and tripling recorded votes in white Republican suburbs."

Just want to be sure of what I found.

[heavenlyboy34]

Nice find. I don't know why people accept electronic voting.

Paper ballots, in a sealed box, opened on election night and counted in public, results posted online for each precinct. Any person should then be able to tally the votes and get the exact same count as the official number.

It only matters who counts the votes and as demonstrated repeatedly, electronic voting machines are horrible
Ah, a student of Stalin! :D ;)

[RonRules]

You guys might want to read a post from back in April on BBV:

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/82018.html

"The alteration to Shelby County's voting system is especially troubling because it enables precinct-specific political party codes. Let me explain, and I'm sure you will see how inappropriate this is:

The Diebold/ES&S/Dominion "GEMS" system assigns a number to each political party. For example, Democrat = "1", Republican = "2", Nonpartisan = "3". The system then knows that a ballot or candidate tagged "1" will be a Democrat, "2" a Republican, and so forth. Imagine, then, the fun you could have if you could tell the system, "but in THIS precinct, let's switch those numbers so "1" is Republican and "2" is Democrat.

These party ID numbers are never seen by the voter or by any poll worker. They are internal ID numbers which tell the computer how to identify each political party.

In the Diebold GEMS system, the county IT guy sets this ID number just once. It is a global value, and is automatically the same for every precinct in the county. In fact, let me just show you what the party ID table looks like for the whole county:

Democrat - 1
Republican - 2
Nonpartisan - 3

See how simple this is? Imagine now, that you take a completely separate program that didn't even come with the Diebold system, and was written by someone else, and instead had it do this:

Precinct 1 - Democrat = (assign your own number)
Precinct 1 - Republican = (assign your own number)
Precinct 1 - Nonpartisan = (assign your own number)
Precinct 2 - Democrat = (assign your own number)
Precinct 2 - Republican = (assign your own number)
Precinct 2 - Nonpartisan = (assign your own number)

That's what Shelby County has done.

Why would there ever be an election where you use a different identifier for Democrats in one precinct than another within the same county and in the same election? Shelby County has hundreds of precincts, and has altered their system to allow each precinct and sub-precinct (called "splits") to assign party identifiers that can vary by precinct. But more to the point, it doesn't matter why they say they did it. "

[QuickZ06]

Good stuff!

[RonRules]

Good stuff!

It'll get better, much better. Stay tuned and read everything you can about Shelby county election fraud and other places where that software was used.

If anybody wants to help, I need to know all the counties where that software was used. Bev only mentions other states like TN, WI, PA, CO, KS. I need to know the exact counties. Thanks.