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How to Hack the Vote and Steal the Election
divisionbyzero writes "Many people have asked for it so that the government will have to deal with it. So here it is: a guide to stealing an election that uses electronic voting machines written by Jon Stokes over at Arstechnica.
From the article:
"In all this time, I've yet to find a good way to convey to the non-technical public how well and truly screwed up we presently are, six years after the Florida recount. So now it's time to hit the panic button: In this article, I'm going to show you how to steal an election.""
1. Make sure head of company that supplies voting machines is a vociferous supporter of your party ...
2. There is no step two
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
I'd go as far to say that it is more ethical to distribute it. The information becomes widely known. Maybe someone will hack an election to make it very obviously hacked, thus forcing a re-vote with an honest, verifiable way to count votes.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
Or is it more unethical to have access to information that threatens us all and not say anything for fear that some "bad guy" might use it against us? The truth is that some "bad guy" is already sitting around thinking up ways to to use the information or writing the information down for himself from scratch. Security through obscurity never works for long.
My humor is probably your flamebait
(libertarian party coming out as first) and get the system fixed subsequently"
If you really want election reform you have to make it in the best interest of the the Dem/Rep party. The best way to do that would be to have a third party victory. As long as someone in the Professional Politicians Club get's elected, the powers that be don't care about voting accuracy. They have no reason to.
We are all just people.
Correct. As a chemist, I know what harm chemistry can cause - illegal pharmaceuticals, explosives, etc. And so, I demand an immediate crackdown on publically accessible chemistry texts, to ensure a brighter tomorrow.
Correct. As a firearm owner, I know what harm firearms can cause - killings, accidental shootings, property damage, etc. And so, I demand an immediate crackdown on publically accessible repair manuals, to ensure a brighter tomorrow.
Correct. As a driver, I know what harm poor driving can cause - vehicular homicide, property damage, etc. And so, I demand an immediate crackdown on access to automobiles, driving instruction literature, etc., to ensure a brighter tomorrow.
Congressmen should maintain an exemption to all of the above, to ensure they can oversee said systems, and protect the workings of our great society. Public oversight should not be necessary, as I have full trust in the state.
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
I just hope someone does it. MY PARTY!!! lol... the system is screwed.
When people give a shit more about some gays marrying in NJ than they do about genocide in Darfur, military and civilian deaths in Iraq & Afghanistan, and people dying in this country due to being priced out of receiving their necessary meds, we have become a country that has lost focus on things that *actually matter*.
That being said, I'm not optimistic anyone that's in my camp has the guts to steal an election, we'd rather give it away. Liberal media my ass... I wish!
The best thing that can possibly happen for this country and secure elections would be for Buggs Bunny to win 100% of the vote in at least one, preferably multiple districts. Until people see these results come in on election night, they'll never believe that it can really happen.
Hannibal is brilliant by all accounts (especially his own...) and one of the few people who understands technology and communication well enough to be able to put esoteric subjects into terms understandable to an intelligent lay person, but he's not anything close to the only person to be able to figure this kind of thing out - especially since he probably didn't spend a whole lot of time on this article compared to the amount of time someone who wanted to actually steal an election would.
If Hannibal can do this then someone who wanted to steal an election, and could spend a trivial amount of money on doing it could absolutely do the same. It is utterly absurd to think that the analysis he did in the course of researching and writing a single article couldn't be done (and probably was done a long time ago) by any one of hundreds of other organizations if they had a small team working on it for months or years.
The result? The only people for who this is news are the people who don't have a vested interest in stealing an election - and those are the people who need to know about it. Bravo to my favourite tech site for doing this.
- ------- There are ten kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who... Huh?
It's better that many bad guys know of a "hack" that doesn't work anymore, than that a few know of one that still does.
FRA: STFU GTFO
People hav ebeen writing reports and letters to the machine manufacturers and politicians since BEFORE the 2004 election warning how unsecure the electronic voting system was. A totally new way to bypass what little "security" these machines have seem to show up on a monthly basis.
People have given sworn testimony in court about the security issues and how their concerns fell on deaf ears in upper management, or sometimes even met with legal threats and unemployment.
Quite simply, proper channels HAVE been exhausted. Either nobody gets it or they are deliberately trying not to hear it.
=Smidge=
Ideally, for the layperson you would simply explain that each pricinct's votes are stored in a small database, and that it can simply be edited with a piece of software commonly included in Microsoft's popular Office suite. Then, show a screenshot of access with the GEMS database opened, highlight the vote tally for some candidate, and explain that you simply click in the box and change the number. Then explain how it would be impossible to know what the vote count could be due to the lack of paper...relate it back to punched ballots (just save the ballots and recount em if necessary), optical scanners (again you have the ballots and usually there is a paper log that prints each vote as it is scanned), etc.
All of that is understandable to even the layperson. Most people understand what Microsoft Office is. Most people have heard of a database and understand thats how businesses store all their information. Most people have seen a spreadsheet and a screenshot of someone editing an access database looks almost the same.
You're joking? The people with the motivation to rig the election are the main parties. They're also best placed to get away with it. Who are these "terrorists" that would want to rig the results? As far as a group like Al Quaeda (who I presume you're thinking of here), both the main parties are pretty much identical. They are, after all, funded by the same players and neither has shown much compassion to the people of Saudi Arabia in living memory.
Terrorists want attention and to make a statement. Rigging an election is something that has limited benefit once it is publically known. If an election is or has been rigged, you'll find the culprits much closer to home.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
You left off the words "to me".
...
True enough, the importance of an issue is largely subjective
Another way to look at issues is how time critical are the issues at hand, and one thing you'll notice is that the most time critical issues (genocide for example) are usually the ones that fall lowest on the national/international radar. Gay marriage will be heavily debated both inside and outside of the media where (regardless of the outcome) ten years from now the day to day lives of those involved in this issue will remain (essentially) the same; genocide (on the other hand) will not be a focus of any news report (or debated much by anyone) yet every day that passes means that hundreds or thousands of people die as a consequence of doing nothing.
I remember election night in 2000, I was watching CBS I believe. They called Florida for Gore.
The influence of the provably biased media on elections as they are occurring should be a shameful thing to us and disallowed. I know people who were standing in (a long) line in Florida and heard it'd been called for Gore and so didn't bother to vote (for either candidate) after that - talk about sanctioned disenfranchising.
To him?
Mass murder, loss of life due to partial failure of socio-economic systems in some classes, war and chaos are all private matters of concern now? Don't know why I should have to actually say this at risk of karma, but a if a few guys screwing each other in NJ with matrimonial ambitions - if they are more important to us than the above issues, then maybe we have lost a lot more than just "focus".
I agree with the general consensus among slashdoters that voting machine schematics and source code must be open to the public for inspection. I also think that we can improve election security, while still retaining an anonymous ballot, by allowing voters to check to make sure that their own vote was properly counted. Here's my plan:
To begin with, the regular voter verification process happens at the door. You go into the polling booth, select all your options, and a confirmation screen comes up for you to check and make sure you selected everything properly. When you confirm, a small piece of paper is printed out that has a serial number and a dynamically generated decryption key on it. Your vote is then sent along to a tabulation server. Your unencrypted vote is added up with the other votes, and the pair of your serial number and your encrypted vote is stored at the same time.
Later in the day, you can go home, and log onto a special government website. You enter your serial number, along with your decryption key, and the verification server shows your vote back to you. The only identifier attached to each vote is a serial number, and it requires the proper decryption key to view the vote. Nevertheless, it allows individual voters to check to make sure that their vote was counted. As long as source-code can be publicly inspected, we can verify that counting is not being "faked" by saving an individual user's vote for verification purposes but not actually adding it to the overall tabulation, thus preventing fraud by under-voting.
To prevent fraud by over-voting, the tabulation server will keep track of the total number of votes it receives from each machine. Local election officials will keep a hand-tally of the number of voters who visit each poll. At the end of the day, the hand tally is checked against the server's tally to make sure there is no discrepancy.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
No, he left off the words "to sane, rational people who haven't let their vindictive excuse for morality blind them to the real problems." If you're claiming there are valid reasons to prioritize the "dudes kissing" problem over genocide in Darfur and the Iraq war, you're going to have to present them, because I'm pretty damned skeptical.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I'm fairly certain that the human race would be in no danger of under populating, if same sex marriages/ civil unions, were legal. Or for that matter if marriage were abolished altogether, we still wouldn't have that problem. People have been having babies much longer than the idea of marriage has been around.
No sig for you! Come back, one year!
Yup, and anyone using this to aid the GOP will be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Which is that we don't have an independent media anymore. Rupert Murdoch is as likely to be a whistle blower as Karl Rove is.
Unless we have a real free press, with real media outlets (read: TV, radio, internet, magazine, newspaper, etc.), then we don't have a democracy.
Personally, after watching 911mysteries and other films on related topics, and reviewing the scientific facts for myself, I'm convinced that we already live in 1984, and the only solution is the bloody ugly one that Thomas Jefferson and most of our other founding fathers completely supported.
You did mention the "liberal" media, so you touched on it, but really, when 3 channels are quoting each other with created facts by obvious pundits who are clearly party members.....
You don't have freedom of the press anymore, and it's game over for democracy.
It's been that way since Kennedy got whacked, and on a related issue, that was also our last real election.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Hm. People dying vs. marriage between same-gendered people. Yes, clearly priorities here are only personal preferences.
Look - nobody is saying his (or your) way to reform the medical system is right. But it *is* broken, and we need to talk about fixing it. It's not bums who don't get coverage - it's blue collar people who need to take several jobs and *still* can't get decent coverage. Who's poking whom where is not exactly an overriding concern, compared to that.
Iraq is undebatably a clusterfuck - even el Jefe agrees by now. Again, nobody says either side has the right solution, but shouldn't that discussion *also* receive more exposure than sex between consenting adults? (BTW: If your complaint is that they now get privileges from the government, there's an easy solution - neither hetero nor homo couples get any preferrential treatment over singles. Screw government interference).
As to your other perceived threats: Kim Il Jong, on a *really* good day for him might be able to kill a million Americans. That's if he's having a really good day, and around 2015 when he might have ICBMs. In the meantime, each year 60,000 Americans *do* die due to missing medical coverage. (I'm not even going into the fact that Dick Cheney more or less killed negotiations with both NK and Iran because "you don't negotiate from a position of power" - water under the bridge).
Either way, nobody is proposing to ignore NK. Or Osama. Just maybe focusing a couple of the billions we hand to Haliburton (look at the GOA reports how *much* of that is just waste) on other topics, and doing something good on the side.
But I guess the thought that you might have to give up some of your money to do humanitarian works as opposed to blowing people up is just not bearable...
You know, cynicism is addictive, but it's not attractive. You can't think of a single thing that would be different about this country if Al Gore had won the 2000 election?
Would we be at war in Iraq? No.
Would we be running up record deficits? Probably not.
Would we have slashed public services to provide tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans? Hardly.
Would we be torturing people in secret prisons?
Would September 11th have been pumped up into justification for a global war against 'Islamofascism?'
Yes, both sides are pretty deep in the pockets of corporations. Both sides are often self-serving at the expense of both their stated ideals and the good of the country. Neither side is offering up solutions that really satisfy me. But to say there is "no difference" is just whiny, and promotes the sort of apathy that corrupt systems thrive on.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Marriage is the very cornerstone of American civilization, and to allow same sex marriages would fundamentally damage the institution of marriage, and by extension fundamentally damage American civilization. By that reasoning, it must take priority over any external issue.
Again, I, personally, don't believe that to be a logical viewpoint, but there are others out there who do.
If people really wanted to defend marriage, they'd outlaw divorce.
Also, when people pull out the "damage the institution of marriage" I usually ask them
how exactly the damage occurs, because honestly I don't see how gay people getting
married affects the marriages of straight people.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
People always play this stupid game - it's about life and death, who cares about [insert lesser issue].
So we shouldn't build roads, fund museums, build schools, create wildlife sanctuaries, and so on. All of our cash should go to immediate life-saving projects.
OH, and for the record, while I'm not in either "camp" and don't give a squat about the sexual practices of NJ males, it was never really about that. It's all about the money (government benefits to spouses), and it always is. Both sides put a bunch of nonsense up on the airways and refuse to talk about what matters in grownup land - how much does it cost.
Personally, I think government should get out of the marriage promotion business altogether and just concern itself with guardianship laws and contract law. But hey, now both sides can target me for not caring.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
The quickest way to get the system changed is to create a scandal by actually stealing an election. I would suggest making a Libertarian, Green, or other 3rd party win the govenor's race. That should make it pretty obvious.
Statistical analysis has already demonstrated fraud in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. There is no doubt whatsoever that significant voting irregularities took place, and that they had the effect of giving the election to Bush rather than his opponent in both cases. There were also, it is worth noting, some anomalies that favoured Democrats, although not by so wide a margin (perhaps they were just playing their cards more closely, or didn't need as big shifts to win in those races.)
I sincerely hope that some American hero stands up and hacks the upcoming elections in a big way. They will get jailed for some kind of crime, but someone has to stand up and fight, and not say, "Oh, but my career would suffer if I was willing to sacrifice myself for the good of my country." But I have no illusions that such a successful hack would have any immediate effect. It will take many hacks over many elections to convince the idiots who think that election fraud is simply a stick to beat Republicans with, or who dismiss all evidence of fraud as impossible because "they" would never allow such a thing.
We know Diebold machines can be hacked very easily. We know that they have been hacked in past elections, based on analysis of exit poll anomalies. We know that there is a great deal at stake in the American elections in the next two years.
If America deserves to survive, there will be at least one person somewhere who is even now implementing a plan that will result in 100% of the votes cast in their county going to third-party candidates. In practical terms it must be third-party, because otherwise the vast majority of voters who cast their ballot for the favoured candidate would simply shrug, spit, and say, "I don't see no problem with that." Nothing short of a third-party landslide victory will put a dent in the partisan complacency of mainstream voters, and even then the lying bastards in power will claim that this was a special-case problem that they know for sure didn't affect any other races. And the complacent sheeple will believe them.
If no one is willing to take the risk of throwing egregiously throwing the vote in their county then America does not deserve to survive as a functioning democratic republic, and it will not.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
If your complaint is that they now get privileges from the government, there's an easy solution - neither hetero nor homo couples get any preferrential treatment over singles.
But the whole point of what the Christians want is to be able to reward people they like (i.e. themselves) and punish people they do not like (i.e. fags). So, taking away their special privledges to put them on a level field does not accomplish this. Giving gays the right to marry does not accomplish this. What they want is the government to send checks to Christians and put the fags in jail. Because, you see, Christians are so "loving".
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Honestly, I don't see how it damages the institution of marrage either. However, the fact that you and I, as well as many others, disagree with something that group feels is so fundamentaly important is the reason the issue gets so much attention.
What if you don't "see how" because the statement is a lie? What if people aren't against gay marriage because it would "damage marriage"? What if people are against gay marriage for the same reason that people are against mixing of the races, women having the vote, or that other religion being permitted to meet in an other wise good, my religion town?
Why were so many people against rights for blacks? Fear of competition? Hatred of anything different? Something else?
Does it really matter why they're this way? The reality is, lots are that way. Does having a lot of bigots in our town/state/nation mean we should permit bigoted laws?
This is why we've things like the Bill of Rights in this country. This is why we've something to fear in a tyranny of the majority.
Those that would consider voting with their bigoted natures should realize the conceit in the assumption that they are safe because they're in the majority. Demographics evolve. Those promoting an intolerant society will only have themselves to blame when they're the next target of intolerance.
"It is also a fact that owning a Hummer is a big financial burden on people that those without Hummers don't have, and they can use some help."
See how ridiculous that sounds? People have choice on whether or not to breed, as do they have a choice to own a Hummer. I don't feel pity for the financially strapped family in either camp.
(posting from Utah, where 5+ kids is too damn common for my comfort)
Method of processing duck feet