Ask a "Star" of HBO's Voting Machine Documentary

Herbert H. Thompson, PhD ("Hugh" to his friends), is one of the people featured in the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy, that Diebold tried to keep from airing. Hugh is a long-time Slashdot reader who called me to volunteer for this interview — on his own, not through anyone's PR department. Here's a YouTube excerpt from a CNN Lou Dobbs show with Hugh in it. (Find more articles by and about Hugh here. And perhaps check this brand-new MSNBC story about e-voting, too.) Hugh suggests that you give him "your wildest questions about what went on behind the scenes and how safe the e-voting systems actually are." Let's take him up on that challenge, hopefully while following Slashdot interview rules. Note to Diebold and other voting machine companies: We welcome comments and questions from you, same as we welcome them from everyone else. If you feel you are being vilified unfairly by Slashdot readers, please respond and set the record straight.

Comments

Here is my question...

[Noryungi]

Let's assume for a moment the 2006 US House/Senate election goes this way: Republicans keep control of both through a series of smallish victories, Democrats gain a few seats, and the results are explained away in the mainstream media as "fluke results", "margin of error", etc...

How do you prove that foul play (hacking) has been involved?

Do you even have a plan in place to check the results?

Please note that this is a very serious question. There was a saying, a few years back, that said a novice hacker is someone known in a small circle, a confirmed hacker is someone who is known all over the Internet, and a great hacker is someone who is totally invisible.

What if the election was subtly hacked, in a way that left lingering doubts (51%-vs-48% kind of results and all that), but no solid proof?

Re :Pen-and-paper voting

[Black Parrot]

> What, exactly, is the argument against pen-and-paper voting? It seems to me that everybody wants to migrate to voting machines - electronic or mechanical - but so far nobody has explained to me what's wrong with good old-fashioned "put an X next to your candidate's name" voting.

The "problem" is that it doesn't shuffle enough of your tax money into corporate pockets.

Re:paper trail?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Yes, such laws do exist. (They're apparently why you can't get the raw voteing machine and punchcard ballot reader output to examine for statistical signs of vote tampering, too.)

But the point of the printed reciept is NOT for the voter to take it home. The point is for him to put it in a ballot box. Then it's no longer in his possession, so the laws to prevent vote-buying don't apply.

The printed "reciept" is actually the official ballot, and subject to recounts and audits. The voting machine becomes simply a ballot marking aid - which can opportunistically take a count as it operates. The machine's count can be used for rapid return reporting, but only becomes the official count if there are no challenges and the precinct doesn't happen to be randomly selected for auditing.

With a spit-out printed ballot added to the voting machines, the rest of the current software can remain in place. With an audit trail any fraud can be detected and corrected. (Further: With random sampling and the inevitable recount requests in close races and those where fraud is suspected, it is LIKELY to be detected.)

In the absense of the ability to untracably corrupt the count, voting macine fraud attempts become much less likely - and a path to prison rather than to political power.