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Florida County Asks Students To Crack Elections

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the redesigning-the-design-phase dept.

imAck writes: "After the election fiasco last year in Florida, many have discussed the possibilities of using a computerized voting system to replace the old punch-card ballot system. Florida's Broward county is considering buying a $20 million dollar computerized touchscreen system to handle future elections. What makes the story interesting is how they are planning to test the system for security holes. The county plans on holding mock elections in high schools and at senior citizen communities. They are actually asking the students to try and hack into the system during the mock elections to learn of possible security issues." I wonder if Broward County would look into spending their money on hardware and supporting development of the GNU Project's existing electronic voting software.

4 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A danger by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Funny
    > Of course, if someone found an exploit, would they report it? Or simply leave it be, and use it during the election?

    When either Eric Raymond or Bill Gates is elected President, we'll know for sure.

  2. Re:A danger by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
    A danger only in the sense that the surest way to crack it is for whichever side has appointed the most justices, to appeal to the Supreme Court and have the results tossed out on some grounds, such as there being no hard copy, or could have been faked, or there was a smudge on the screen which made 'B-u-c-h-a-n-a-n' look like 'G-o-r-e'

    Pregnant pixels, anyone?

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  3. Some people love to make things complicated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What is it with American elections? Isn't ticking the box on a voting slip good enough? It seems to be good enough for just about every other 1st world country. Is there some farcical requirement in the constitution that elections be complicated, weird and produce dubious results?

    This is just like that episode of "The Simpsons" where they're holding a referendum by blowing out candles, flushing toilets, droping pebbles in jars, pulling on one-armed bandits and other such nonsense. Now we introduce computers. Hell, I wouldn't trust any large scale software project I've ever worked on to count my vote.

    One word, KISS.

  4. The election results by DuncanMurray · · Score: 5, Funny

    And the new President is...


    Cowboy Neal??

    --
    I'll think of a funny sig later on