Kentucky Election Officials Arrested For Changing Votes On E-Voting Machines

from the security... dept

While there have been plenty of conspiracy theories over the years concerning e-voting machines, none have been particularly compelling. The evidence looked like plenty of incompetence, with buggy machines that had huge security flaws that could be exploited -- but we hadn't heard of any cases of anyone actually being caught tampering with or trying to tamper with votes. That isn't to say it didn't happen. It's possible that it happened and the perpetrators weren't caught -- but it's a big leap from it "could" happen, to it "did" happen. So, most of our coverage here has been very much on the bugs and the flaws, rather than any of the conspiracy theories that floated around.

However, it appears that a group of Kentucky election officials, the circuit court judge and the county clerk, were arrested for changing votes in various elections between 2002 and 2006 on e-voting machines. The details suggest that there were two parts to the vote changing. First, there was traditional vote buying -- where they paid people to vote in a certain way. However, the second involved actually changing voters' votes on ES&S e-voting machines.

It didn't involve any hacking or direct security flaws -- but the elections officials made use of the confusing user interface and process of the e-voting machines to trick voters into leaving before their votes had been cast. That's because there's a "vote" button, that some people (silly them!) assumed meant they actually voted. Nope. It turns out that just gets you to a page to review your vote and then confirm it. However, these elections officials told people that once they hit vote they had voted -- and were then able to go in and change the actual votes.

Filed Under: arrest, changing votes, corruption, e-voting, kentucky, vote buying, voting