Election fraud on a massive scale

[sMiLeYz]

null

Reading that, just turns my stomach.

Theres more...

BlackBox voting

Hack the vote

An open invitation to election fraud

Not only is the country's leading touch-screen voting system so badly designed that votes can be easily changed, but its manufacturer is run by a die-hard GOP donor who vowed to deliver his state for Bush next year.

And in August, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, is a major fundraiser for President Bush. In a letter to fellow Republicans, O'Dell said that he was "COMMITTED TO HELPING OHIO DELIVER ITS ELECTORAL VOTES TO THE PRESIDENT NEXT YEAR."

 

[AEB]

being commited to acause and commiting fraud are two seperate things. if i were you id worry more about nevada and california. in nevada the governorwas trying to make it so no proff of citizenship was required in order to vote, and california... well anyone can get a lisence now. besides it was the ANIT gop crowd that pushed for new ballot systems because some of them got confused by arrows....

 

[Ldir]

Democracy for sale. Place your bids.

 

[CPA]

Slate

Salon

Democratic Underground


That's all I needed to see.

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: CPA
Slate

Salon

Democratic Underground


That's all I needed to see.

Ignorance is bliss. Be happy, my man.

It's a serious issue that is wide open for abuse. Not just namby-pamby, have-a-hundred-dead-people-vote abuse, but wholesale stealing of elections by insiders or even savvy hackers. Diebold doesn't even put a freaking password on their Access databases, for God's sake, and they think it's a feature! How incompetent -- or dishonest -- does a company have to be to miss such a fundamental security measure?

You may not care as long as you think it's your party stealing the election, but what happens if North Korean hackers put a Communist in the White House? Sure, everyone would know the results were wrong. But, with today's systems, there is absolutely no way to detect the tampering and no way to audit the results. Chaos. Now imagine that the hackers are more subtle, tilting a few key races just enough to gain a swing vote. We'd never know what hit us.

This problem is easy to solve. All it takes is independent certification of system security, a well-defined process for installing and managing voting systems, and an auditable system that generates paper "receipts" to feed the box counting the votes. If there are discrepancies, count the paper manually.

For some reason, companies like Diebold don't want auditable systems. Instead of fixing the holes, they're launching a P.R. campaign to sell their deceptions to the ignorant. What they need is a kick in the butt. If the government banned a couple of these companies, you can bet the rest would roll out secure systems in short order.

 

[NogginBoink]

Diebold accidentally left the source code for these machines on their ftp site a while back. A few computer science researchers published an academic paper showing that it was full of holes.

I would not be one bit surprised if, during the next election, all these machines stopped working because script kiddies think it'll be fun to bring down the machines. It can be easily done according to the paper.

 

[kaizersose]

whta everyone assumes is that these machines can be hacked. a news program i was watching had a lady from the company and she said that at no time are these machines every connected to the internet. so the code may be hackable, who cares, no one has access to it.

 

[Bowfinger]

Originally posted by: kaizersose
whta everyone assumes is that these machines can be hacked. a news program i was watching had a lady from the company and she said that at no time are these machines every connected to the internet. so the code may be hackable, who cares, no one has access to it.

If you'd bothered to read the article, you'd find this claim is a lie. Imagine that.

 

[ReiAyanami]

see, with punchcards atleast you can count the pregnant chads

 

[naddicott]

Pardon my lack of electrical engineering knowledge, but couldn't one have a hardware based keylogger and packet sniffer detecting every bit of information that goes in and out of the central machine and store everything it detects in a secure, auditable form? Every packet and keystroke that goes into and out of a central voting machine should be part of the public record, IMO - freedom of information and all that.

For that matter, the integrity of the central system is so important that they should also have a live video feed (with a TV showing CNN in the corner to prevent playing back a tape) of the entire room with every critical component in sight that can be monitored and recorded by media and any other logical oversight body.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but instead of fighting their "image problem" with a lobbying campaign, the makers of these voting systems should be bending over backwards to address security concerns when they are raised.

If the Republicans sweep California's elections in 2004, I'll be a little suspicious.

 

[Bowfinger]

There's a lot of information about this on Slashdot today too:

Touch Screen Voting Industry Circling Wagons

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Originally posted by: naddicott
Pardon my lack of electrical engineering knowledge, but couldn't one have a hardware based keylogger and packet sniffer detecting every bit of information that goes in and out of the central machine and store everything it detects in a secure, auditable form? Every packet and keystroke that goes into and out of a central voting machine should be part of the public record, IMO - freedom of information and all that.

For that matter, the integrity of the central system is so important that they should also have a live video feed (with a TV showing CNN in the corner to prevent playing back a tape) of the entire room with every critical component in sight that can be monitored and recorded by media and any other logical oversight body.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but instead of fighting their "image problem" with a lobbying campaign, the makers of these voting systems should be bending over backwards to address security concerns when they are raised.

If the Republicans sweep California's elections in 2004, I'll be a little suspicious.

To me the solution could be quite simple, but then again - when is common sense used in our gov't.

Touch screen records vote and spits out a serialized and barcoded ballot which the person would be able to verify their votes were correct. If there was an error made in the selection the person would be able to "redo" their ballot because as a fail-safe the final screen the voter would see is: Is your printed ballot correct? <yes> <no>
If they chose no - they would be able to go back in and edit their ballot and then it would be printed using the SAME serial number(with the addition of an edit/revision number) of the first copy so when the PAPER ballot is placed in the scanner it would be able to verify instantly that that ballot was the last ballot that that voter had cast even if they edited their vote 50 times. **note - the serial number/barcode would NOT be traceable back to the individual who cast that ballot.

This would not only be fairly simple for people to use - it gives them FULL control of their vote. It provides for a verifiable paper backup incase the system crashed or tinkering with the votes via "hacking" was alleged.

The only possible "hole" or problem in my plan is the possibility of "stupid" voters not sticking the last edit(printed ballot) in the scanner. In that case I don't think it'd be too tough to make them stick their ballot back into the voting machine(which would scan it) if they wanted to edit their vote because of an error. This would be a pretty expensive way to do it but would take away the majority of the "quirks". One more thing that might be a hassle is if there were tons of things to vote for on the ballot and the possibility of the printout taking more than one page? How many items are usually on a ballot? since only the vote would be printed out - shouldn't it all fit on one page?
Example:
President: <name of the person you picked>
Senate #1: <name>
Senate #2: <name>
Proposition 665: <yes/no>
Govenor recall: <yes/no>
etc

<joke>
Would the ACLU bitch if the font size was too small? What would be the appropriate "official" font size and style? hehe - I could just see it now The ACLU would bitch and moan because 'Klingon' isn't recognized as a legitimate language font and that the right of the Klingon's were being infringed upon
</joke>

CkG

 

[Bowfinger]

bump

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Originally posted by: Bowfinger
bump

Thanks - I did a quick search earlier because of the new thread but didn't spend much time looking.

CkG

 

[Queasy]

Cracks me up.

Punch ballots are no good! Too many errors! The 'will or the people' is not considered by little indentions made on punchcards! 'Voters were denied' by a butterfly ballot drawn up by an elected democrat official and approved by elected democrat officials. But it was all some conspiracy that led to lawsuits and hystrionics.

Now we are going and gearing up for the 2004 election with 'its hackable!', 'it'll be a disaster, a fraud!'

Bitch bitch bitch

 

[ReiAyanami]

Linux will be are next president.

 

[Walleye]

Originally posted by: ReiAyanami
Linux will be are next president.

if that were so, then the country would finally be stable .

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Originally posted by: Walleye

Originally posted by: ReiAyanami
Linux will be are next president.

if that were so, then the country would finally be stable .

A winnar is you!

 

[dmcowen674]

I attended the meeting this. The scenarios the Scientist's bring up would have to be on such a scale that no matter what you did to secure the Election would not be possible. Literally what I call Doomsday scenarios. I hate to see it because I thought most Scientist's were above this kind of garbage rhetoric.

I agree that the system put in place is corrupt in that they went with a "All eggs in one basket" situation and they left the "experts" out of the loop. That is really what Scientist's are pissed off about, that they were left out.

There does need to be an oversight committee of "experts", not just with the Technical Electronic system of voting, but all Technical related matters dealing with Law and Elections.

"There are way too many people making Technical decisions that don't know the difference between a 0 and a 1."

Test: Who will be the first person to answer that question here?

 

[smashp]

The problem really is all the MFG of the voting machines are MAJOR GOP Backers, Yet also dump money to the DNC as "Just in case money".

Diebold is a republican Stonghold. They play the rush show over the interoffice speaker system there.

This is the problem with croynism and Government.

If their seems a possibility that the system is corupted or possibly could be, Chances are in this day and age it already has been. MONEY and POWER are the most sought after things in this country.

Diebold screwed the pooch, And they dont care. All they have to do is make it seem like a fair election. God knows it never will be.

Using Access you can edit the election results.


HA
HA
HA
HA
HA

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: NogginBoink
Diebold accidentally left the source code for these machines on their ftp site a while back. A few computer science researchers published an academic paper showing that it was full of holes.

I would not be one bit surprised if, during the next election, all these machines stopped working because script kiddies think it'll be fun to bring down the machines. It can be easily done according to the paper.

It would be pretty funny if Kermit The Frog won the 2004 presidential election.

 

[smashp]

even funnier when its a diebold computer programmer? Actually that might bring attention to the flaw.

 

[dmcowen674]

No problem CTho9305.

I can't PM back. Sometimes it happens (multiple posts on same subject within short period) sometime on purpose most times by accident.
The Mods do their best with the tools at their disposal, thanks guys.