How Could Anyone Possibly Mess With With E-Voting Machines... When They're Left Unguarded For Days?
from the oh,-that's-right,-it's-easy dept
One of the common complaints from the e-voting companies about the various independent security tests that find problems with their machines, is that those test occur under conditions that would never happen in the real world. Specifically, the e-voting companies like to claim that most of the "hacks" revealed would require a lot of access to the machines with no one noticing -- and that just wouldn't be feasible during an election with election officials all around. While even that might be questioned, a much bigger issue is that most polling places leave the e-voting machines totally unguarded and totally unprotected, sometimes for days before the election -- giving anyone with nefarious intent plenty of time to mess around with the machines.Ed Felten has been pointing this out for years. He took photos of such machines at Princeton in 2006 and then again at the primary election earlier this year. This past Tuesday was another election day in many places, including New Jersey, and Ed Felten, once again, took photos of a whole bunch of totally unguarded e-voting machines that any passerby could have accessed. Of course, given that the software itself doesn't seem to work maybe someone will actually adjust the machines to make them work better. Always look on the bright side.
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
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Perhaps...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Take a look at this
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2=1&sid=08/06/05/1848216
As to this, I remember when I was still in high school the machines would be delivered and sit in our unlocked gym several days before an election. These were the old mechanical monstrosities, but from what I understand that practice still hasn't changed with the new touchscreen machines. I think what it will really take to wake people up is somebody performing an attack that elects mickey mouse or something. People just don't seem to get how bad these systems are.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
It's well past time to return to the simplest possible systems: pencil and paper. Yes, such systems still have their issues (as do ALL electoral systems) but those issues are well-known, well-understood, and addressed via proven countermeasures. None of which can be said about electronic systems, BTW.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I hate people sometimes...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I hate people sometimes...
If people can crack security features in games without so much as breaking a sweat, do you really think they can stop someone from tampering with an electronic voting machine?
On top of that, most of the people in politics or those that will probably manage these election locations never took a computer course before in their life and can barely check their own email. The machines could completely fail or skew the election data and NO ONE WILL NOTICE. There'll be no proof.
All you'll end up with is a box full of data, and how that data is transferred or counted can be manipulated at will. Hell, you could just prevent the machine from writing anything into memory and just make up numbers when the election is over.
It's pure... bull...sh*t. Talk about a corrupt system...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I hate people sometimes...
While politics is almost by definitiion corrupt, in this case it isn't corruption that is the problem necessasarily as much as blatant disreguard for change.
Here we have a system based on certain expectations. These expectations are that it would be very time consuming to alter *paper* ballots, and that it would be 'impossible' for a voter to not recognize a 'blank' ballot.
There are ways around those basic problems for altering elections using paper ballots, but for the most part it has and does work 'okay' in ensuring a fair vote.
Now we are getting e-voting machines and we have a problem. You don't have hundreds of thousands of ballots at a local election, you have a handful of machines that create and tally the votes themselves.
In short, less points of failure. Normally this is a good thing as its easier to keep track of, except it takes less failures to bring you down in some cases (like this).
But the real problem here, is that election officials aren't adapting their system. As Mike usually points out as a failing of the recording industry, they aren't changing their 'business model' and it is causing problems.
They need to get their act together, or else there will be problems in the near future. Fairly large problems.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Jake
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Jake
...that I see and agree with your point that election officials need to take the responsibility to do their part by treating their voting mechanisms as things that are as important as they really are--I just want to make sure we don't look at that as any less of a rebuke to the companies that made this crap and took the underhanded actions they've taken to ensure their profits don't suffer at the expense of the people's rights.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lexington, KY had them unguarded...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
e-voting is the fraud of the century
How hard is it for people to understand that the best voting system ever devised is Paper and pen? You print out a card with all the election information, and just have people mark the card with a permanent marker. If you make the card in an organized manner, you can then scan the choices using a very simple OCR machine. There, fast and acurate counting with reliable paper trail. Simple and cheap. But I guess that makes too much sense, or waste too little money, or too reliable for the official's liking.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]