Hacking An Election
from the remains-possible dept
Nothing particularly new here if you've been following the whole issue on problems with electronic voting machines, but Salon has a fairly comprehensive piece describing the concerns of those who want to stop current voting machines from being used in elections. It describes some of the not-quite-so-secure techniques Diebold used to "secure" their machines - including leaving the necessary password out in the open. It also talks about how comments in the source code of the Diebold machines make it clear that the engineers knew that parts of the software don't work, and yet it was still used in elections. The responses from those who defend the electronic voting systems are a bit scary, as they basically ignore the point. Instead, they talk about how other voting methods have problems as well, and how difficult or expensive it would be to fix these voting machines. Whoever said democracy was supposed to be cheap? Update: Whoops. A new report says electronic voting machines in North Carolina lost 436 ballots last year.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Fastest way to change them
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Fastest way to change them
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Link from The Star
Missing from the article is a statement that appeared in the print edition about "election machine employees simply went to the BARN where the equipment was stored to make updates" Geesh, I know this is Indiana, but storing expensive touch-screen voting systems in a BARN?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Fastest way to change them
Unfortunately this would have exactly the opposite effect: so much attention would be focused on finding who did it that the problems with the voting machines themselves would be ignored.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Fastest way to change them
[ link to this | view in thread ]
WTF?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
San Diego uses Diabold Machines
Anyway, to prevent my vote from being "lost", I am voting absentee this year (so my ballot can be "lost" in the mail instead.) However, I'd be interested in looking at how the system is set up here in San Diego; they say they have a "secure", inaccessible network to send voting data; are they still using wireless?
I wonder if I start Wardriving March 2nd, if I'll go to jail for "illegally accessing their inaccessible network" just by receiving their radio waves in my car?
[ link to this | view in thread ]