You Can Buy Anything Online: Even An Election*

from the enhancing-the-voting-experience dept

Fri, Oct 27th 2006 12:45pm — Mike Masnick

With so many stories about problems and vulnerabilities with e-voting machines, there are lots of conspiracy theories out there about how any particular campaign might go about "fixing" an election. Well, as with so many good ideas these days, it appears someone has set up a nice website to make it that much easier. In what is clearly a clever bit of satire, someone has set up a website called fixavote.com that is supposedly from a company called Election Partners or Election Consultants. The site uses ambiguous, yet hilarious, language to basically suggest that they'll hack the vote in any particular election area, if it uses e-voting machines: "By leveraging existing electronic voting technology, Election Consultants enhances the voting experience, which ultimately ensures a desirable election outcome." It also includes services such as: "real-time voter correction" and (my favorite) "enhanced retrospective tallying." The people behind the site won't admit that it's satire (as with any good satirist). However, in the PC World article above, the guy does say that about 30 political campaigns have contacted him. This could be entirely made up as well, but it would definitely be amusing to find out that this is actually a honeypot to try to draw out campaigns that are actually looking to hack the vote.

* Note: Election buying not valid in districts without e-voting machines.

9 Comments

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zeroJJ, 27 Oct 2006 @ 1:32pm

trademarks?
With technologies such as "SmartVote TM" "VoteCorrect TM"
Doesn't Karl Rove already this trademarked?

I can see some litigation coming on this one!
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mmrtnt (profile), 27 Oct 2006 @ 1:41pm

Cease-and-Desist
When does the Diebold take-down notice go out to their ISP?
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adam, 27 Oct 2006 @ 2:48pm

re: cease & desist
they state in very clear language they're in no way associated with diebold et al. i don't think they have any legal grounds for a take-down (then again, when has that ever stopped an isp?)
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2006 @ 3:28pm

Gives me a warm-fuzzy feeling knowing that evoting is on track for voters this coming election. I've never felt that my vote counted, but thanks to Election Consultants, I'll be confident that for once, my vote makes a difference! :)

Realistically though, it makes me wonder why the FBI/CIA has never thought to run such a sting opperation. They're okay with doing drug and prostitution sting ops, but evidently protecting US citizens from political corruption is a hands-off area. :(
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William, 27 Oct 2006 @ 4:40pm

Genuis
I'm going to be the next senator from Maryland. Thank you all for your votes I couldn't have made it here without you.

This sounds like the sort of thing that a campaign might throw a couple hundred grand at just in case. And even better when they loose they wont be able to sue anyone because that would be an admission of fraud.
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Search Engines WEB, 27 Oct 2006 @ 11:43pm

Google Bombing
nytimes.com/2006/10/26/us/politics/26googlebomb.html

Of course, another way would be a massive groundswell of Google Bombing during a campaign
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Oct 2006 @ 8:54am

Re: Google Bombing
At least Google Bombing is semi-democratic. It take a many individual bloggers (voters) who support a cause to make it work. It's almost like voting. :-)
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rishi, 28 Oct 2006 @ 11:53am

Election Voting Machines are in use in india for the past 4-5 years. they have been used for state as well as national level elections.

The ones we use are quite simple as compared to the Diebold ones and do not have any touch screens or sophisticated computers. It is a small device which can operate on a 6V battery pack. You can read more about the EVM and the diferenced between it and Diebold at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_voting_machines and
http://techaos.blogspot.com/2004/05/indian-evm-compared-with-diebold.html

Sometimes a low-tech solution is better than a high-tech one.
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Matt Bennett, 31 Oct 2006 @ 4:04pm

Called the number. He answered. I didn't have much to say, so I just told him I was amused someone answered. He seemed to understand.
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