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Diebold Insider Comments on Voting System Flaw
Call Me Black Cloud writes "A Diebold insider is blowing the whistle on the company's continued lack of concern about security holes in its voting software. The insider wrote to Brad Friedman, a somewhat shrill political blogger, claiming the company is instructing technicians to keep quiet about the security flaws. This is despite the vulnerability being listed on the US-CERT website for the last year. A Diebold company rep admits the software can be remotely accessed via modem, but states, "it's up to a jurisdiction whether they wish to use it or not...I don't know of any jurisdiction that does that." The insider disputes that, claiming several counties in Maryland made use of the feature in 2004." This in addition to the fact that Blackboxvoting already hacked the system using a chimp last year.
Unfortunately, their chances of getting their candidate selected retroactively are quite low. So far, all the evidence seems to point that Bush was, indeed, elected for the second term (suck it up!). As far as I know (I must admit that my knowledge is based on what I've read from the press), there's no real evidence of any vote fraud. Even this 'insider' has no evidence of actual fraud.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Many would say it is much easier to tamper with a paper ballot election. Ballots dissapear, ballots materialize out of nowhere etc.
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the law of conservation of energy?
Physical ballots do not spontaneously materialize and disappear. Electronic ballots, on the other hand, can do just that.
Burning boxes of ballots in fields is nothing new. One could postulate that tampering with computer ballots leave much more of a trail than traditional tampering.
The difference is that if you want to burn ballots in the field, you have to physically go get the ballots, physically transport them, and physically destroy them. All of which carries some amount of risk of being caught by widely-understood, traditional methods of security.
Electronic voting systems are pure voodoo to 99.99% of the population. Remotely tampering with them, especially when the security on them is made of swiss cheese, involves much less risk of being caught and can be done on a muchc broader scale -- one person can only haul of and destroy so many physical ballots, but one professional electronic vote-rigger can conceivably modify every single ballot cast.
Okay- I see your point. Not to be argumentative- but my friend, .edu's.
The difference is that if you want to burn ballots in the field, you have to physically go get the ballots, physically transport them, and physically destroy them. All of which carries some amount of risk of being caught by widely-understood, traditional methods of security.
Vote tampering is almost an institution in the US. From the very dawn of America. I really don't want to get into giving a history lesson, but I suggest doing a google search for vote tampering and only clicking on the
I know that your points are great in theory, but unfortunately history disproves you.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Support -
http://openvoting.org/
Not only open voting, but open source for the firmware that takes your vote.
They have been doing good things in California.
For the two largest counties in Minnesota, one has some sort of response to election security problems.
In Hennepin County the scanner system, not Diebold scanner machines, the precinct results were no longer modemed in to the county office but hand delivered in the September election.
Ramsey County Minnesota uses Diebold scanners with the suspect central counting software. Public Test of Ramsey Voting Systems