Oregon elections director fired after reporting problems

[GURPS]

He also said federal money had been misspent and that $11.7 million from the federal government must be returned by Dec. 31 because the Legislature did not authorize to “spend a penny” of the funds.

This happened even as the Oregon Centralized Voter Registration system is so old that Microsoft no longer supports the Windows Server 2008 system that it operates on.

The secretary of state’s office was going to take bids - officially known as request for proposal - in October for a new system, but Clarno paused this project without consulting with the county clerks or Trout, the ousted election director said.

Furthermore, Trout said calls by himself and other election officials for third-party verification systems to prevent Oregon from hacking of election systems went unheeded.

Stephen Trout, Oregon elections director, fired after reporting problems

Oregon’s elections director was abruptly fired in a text message by the secretary of state after he pointed out serious issues with the state’s aging and vulnerable technology for running elections.

m.washingtontimes.com

 

[PeoplesElbow]

Twelve year old software isnt that old.

 

[stgislander]

Twelve year old software isnt that old.

Heck no. Our office server is running Windows Server 2008.

 

[PeoplesElbow]

Heck no. Our office server is running Windows Server 2008.

We have an old computer tucked away that runs DOS, it's a Cyrax 586 with 256MB of RAM.

 

[stgislander]

We have an old computer tucked away that runs DOS, it's a Cyrax 586 with 256MB of RAM.

Oh... Gilligan and I keep a bunch of those ancient machines around for" just in case." Plus I have a handful of harddrives that boot directly into MS DOS 6.20.

 

[Makavide]

Twelve year old software isnt that old.

it is when support is no longer provided by the manufacturer, ending all security updates.

 

[GURPS]

Twelve year old software isnt that old.

Heck no. Our office server is running Windows Server 2008.

you want to bet your life on that ....... an isolated server running Windows NT 4.0 is just fine ..... hell until recent the Nuclear Launch Code System was still kept on 8 inch floppies

I do not get the impression this voting system is isolated, I'm not willing to bet The Republic it is as secure as it should be

 

[SamSpade]

you want to bet your life on that .......

Funny you should ask - you're on life support and struggling to live.
How comfortable would you be to technology running off DOS and floppies?

 

[PeoplesElbow]

Funny you should ask - you're on life support and struggling to live.
How comfortable would you be to technology running off DOS and floppies?

It was a lot less likely to have bugs, security flaws etc.

I can't ever recall wordperfect for DOS ever doing g something goofy. Floppies I would not trust

 

[SamSpade]

It was a lot less likely to have bugs, security flaws etc.

I can't ever recall wordperfect for DOS ever doing g something goofy. Floppies I would not trust

It also was never subjected to the kinds of viruses and security THREATS that we have now. Computers back then worked in isolation - your PC-XT never ever was attached to the Internet and the only way it got a virus was from an infected floppy. Computers now are all networked and the oldest ones are susceptible to everything.

While applications back then weren't oversaturated with feature bloat - deep in the guts they were loaded with sloppy coding. Because there wasn't any reason for otherwise. They were flimsy by today's standards. Security? From what?

 

[PeoplesElbow]

It also was never subjected to the kinds of viruses and security THREATS that we have now. Computers back then worked in isolation - your PC-XT never ever was attached to the Internet and the only way it got a virus was from an infected floppy. Computers now are all networked and the oldest ones are susceptible to everything.

While applications back then weren't oversaturated with feature bloat - deep in the guts they were loaded with sloppy coding. Because there wasn't any reason for otherwise. They were flimsy by today's standards. Security? From what?

Part of my point, that life support system on DOS is most likely is in a closed ecosystem.

Shouldn't the election system that is used one day a year at most a closed system?

 

[GURPS]

Shouldn't the election system that is used one day a year at most a closed system?

as I understand it the vote tallies are pushed across the internet ? I know at one time they were called in and manually entered at the state hq

Voting machine - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Location of tallying[edit]
Optical scans can be done either at the place of voting,"precinct", or in another location. DRE machines always tally at the precinct.

Precinct-count voting system[edit]
A precinct-count voting system is a voting system that tallies ballots at the polling place. Precinct-count machines typically analyze ballots as they are cast. This approach allows for voters to be notified of voting errors such as overvotes and can prevent spoilt votes. After the voter has a chance to correct any errors, the precinct-count machine tallies that ballot. Vote totals are made public only after the close of polling. DREs and precinct scanners have electronic storage of the vote tallies and may transmit results to a central location over public telecommunication networks.

Central-count voting system[edit]
A medium-speed central-count ballot scanner, the DS450 made by Election Systems & Software can scan and sort about 4000 ballots per hour.
A central count voting system is a voting system that tallies ballots from multiple precincts at a central location. Central count systems are also commonly used to process absentee ballots.

Central counting can be done by hand, and in some jurisdictions, central counting is done using the same type of voting machine deployed at polling places, but since the introduction of the Votomatic punched-card voting system and the Norden Electronic Vote Tallying System in the 1960s, high speed ballot tabulators have been in widespread use, particularly in large metropolitan jurisdictions. Today, commodity high-speed scanners sometimes serve this purpose, but special-purpose ballot scanners are also available that incorporate sorting mechanisms to separate tallied ballots from those requiring human interpretation.[40]

Voted ballots are typically placed into secure ballot boxes at the polling place. Stored ballots and/or Precinct Counts are transported or transmitted to a central counting location. The system produces a printed report of the vote count, and may produce a report stored on electronic media suitable for broadcasting, or release on the Internet.