Comments on: How to steal an election

By: n2y2

n2y2 — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 22:26:12 +0000

Frankly, voter fraud has always existed. This is just a new method, not a new problem.

Because of the technical expertise required to pull off this ruse, it may exclude some of the old methods of fraud (Ballot stuffing).

Plus, as bad as these machines are, you must still be physically on-site to perform the tampering. That means that no hackers from China are going to be remotely changing the election.

Here in Nevada, we have what is considered the most secure voting system in use. That is directly due to the states relationship with electronic gambling. The system is not absolutely bullet proof, but what makes a huge difference is a physical paper trail. Even if someone alters the electronic data, there is no way to change the paper the prints with each ballot casts.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/10/28/nevada.evote/index.html

Bottom line: electronic voting systems probably don’t have worse security than the mechanical/paper ballots that are being replaced.

By: stephen

stephen — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 22:19:17 +0000

I read a story about this yesterday where a Diebold manager said that the “IT” team had used an older model voting machine…and that the newer ones had better software. The Diebold guy also was surprised that the “hackers” had not shared their study with their peers before publishing it.

There’s probably someone somewhere who works for Diebold who left a back door for someone to hack the newer machines…if there -are- newer machines.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 18:02:44 +0000

I’m deeply concerned that the mainstream media and the general public aren’t . . . well, deeply concerned about this. A revelation like this one ought to cause–if not rioting in the streets–at least major league indignation from every quarter. Where’s the outrage?

By: Mangesh

Mangesh — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 17:22:06 +0000

that’s a clever point… Diebold does seem lazy from what I’ve read.

By: n2y2

n2y2 — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 17:15:25 +0000

All of that is because Diebold is lazy about security. If they were to adopt measures taken by the gambling industry none of this would be possible. Slot machines are all computers these days and multiple levels of security ensure that no one could do any of the shenanigans above. Even if you could physically break into the box (unlikely), the software could not be changed.

I guess we care more about our money than our votes.