Hackers, Public Differ Greatly On E-voting

cweditor writes "Sorry to be touting one of my own Computerworld stories, but I only covered it because I found it so interesting. The Ponemon Institute surveyed 2,933 members of the general public and then 100 DEFCON and Black Hat attendees to get their views on electronic voting. 'The degree of difference was startling,' said director Larry Ponemon. It was the biggest split between 'experts and the public he'd ever found. For example, 83% of the experts said e-voting is less or much less secure against election tampering than paper ballots, compared with just 19% of the general public."

Comments

Re:I probably haven't thought this out...

[xTown]

That's good, but it doesn't guard against flaws in the software itself--deliberate or otherwise. Who's to say that there's not going to be something like this:

void TallyVote(vote theVote)
{
printPaperRecord(theVote);
BushTally++; // Ha ha!
}

...which would print out your vote on paper, but record a vote for Bush no matter what. The whole process would need a lot more oversight than anybody would be able to give it in the three months before the election.

probably not Stalin's quote

[shrubya]

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

I've attributed it to him in the past, but it's probably not. Hooray for google leading me to the right page.

http://www.google.com/search?q=count+votes+decid e+ quote
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekl y/aa121 800a.htm

Re:Re paying people

[Phisbut]

That's not true (not in Canada). My wife worked for Election Canada a couple of months ago as a scrutineer. She was the one who handed the blank paper ballot to the voters and who gave them instructions, and at the end of the day, she was the one responsible of counting the votes by hand. For that, her and her assistant (who was adding the score everytime she showed a ballot) got paid by the government.

Among the witnesses, the people representing their parties were not paid by the government, maybe they were being paid by their party, I don't know. The other officials acting as witnesses were also being paid by the government. All those people took oaths, and it was all done in a very strict manner.

And yes, people from the public were allowed in the room (up to a certain limit) during the counting.

Re:Diebold CEO Promises to "Deliver" for Bush

[riptide_dot]

The head of a company [Diebold] vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

That's a link to the whole story. Or, if you prefer, this one has that quote in it as well. I think the Flamebait rating of the parent was a little harsh. There are lots of reasons to be suspicious of e-voting machines, this one just happens to be a glaring one. (IMHO) This would also serve as proof of sorts that the "general public" that was interviewed for this study probably didn't read this article (and probably doesn't read nearly as many articles about this type of issue as /. people do).

Actually

[simontek2]

Actually its a lot harder to hack into. I have been to the DieBolt, the maker of Some of the Evoting machines, I know the machines. It basically works the same way NSA keeps machines offline and manually have to transfer files.