Kathy Nickolaus in Waukesha forgot to save? Really?

by ColdFusion04
Thu Apr 07, 2011 at 11:41 PM EDT

It was with great interest that I watched the press conference of Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus. You see, my "day job" is in the field of information technology, and I was tuned in to her every word regarding her use of Microsoft Access to tabulate the county wide vote totals.

So I decided to make a little voting database in Microsoft Access 2010 and 2007, to test her story.

Nickolaus says repeatedly that she imported the data into Access, but through a process of "human error", she "forgot to save". Then come the tears, repeatedly, throughout her presser.

Here's the problem. Microsoft Access (any version) doesn't ask you to save. When you enter data into a table, it automatically updates the underlying database. If you close the database accidentally, the data you entered (or imported, in the case of Nickolaus) remains. If you stop to take a phone call from your buddy the governor (for example), your data will still automatically save.

For further proof, I asked my 8 year old daughter to try to enter data in my little Access voting system mock up, and not save it. She couldn't do it. She tried all sorts of things, and the votes still saved.

I entered 10,000 votes for Prosser, and closed the database. No save prompt appeared. I came back in, and there were the 10,000 votes! Thanks Bill Gates! I entered 20,000 votes for Prosser, and did a hard shutdown of my computer. When I booted back up and reopened the file, the 20,000 votes were there! Thanks again Bill Gates!

Bottom line: Nickolaus is clearly lying. Not only did she insist on having her own private system based on some of the most unsecure, pedestrian computing technology available (Seriously? Access and Excel controlling such an important part of our democracy?), but she apparently assumes that nobody else has ever used Microsoft Access.

On an almost daily basis, I recommend to my business users to avoid Microsoft Access, due to the almost complete lack of security and auditing within the tool. It's good for keeping track of your grocery list, perhaps. But not an election.

It's difficult to imagine being any worse at stealing an election and lying about it. Honestly.

Update: Thanks for the rec list. It's been years since my last rec list diary. I live in Wisconsin and, as my neighbors can undoubtedly attest from my endless loud ranting, I'm not pleased this evening. It feels good to contribute something to the research.

Update 2: It was pointed out in the comments and some messages that it is possible to add validation to data submission in Access, using Visual Basic or other macros. In other words, it's possible to add a button to "save" the data. This is true, if one was concerned enough about security and accuracy to add validation that doesn't exist natively (Does Nickolaus strike you as someone overly concerned with extra security and accuracy?). However, during the press conference, Nickolaus speculates she may have inadvertently turned the macros off. If this were the case, it would have allowed the automatic saving, not the other way around. Bottom line again: Her story doesn't add up, and it doesn't pass the IT smell test.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/07/964645/-Kathy-Nickolaus-in-Waukesha-forgot-to-saveReally