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Researchers Crack Every Certified CA Voting Machine
ewhac writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that computer security researchers throughout the University of California system managed to crack the security on every voting machine they tested that has been approved for use in the state. The researchers are unwilling to say how vulnerable the machines are, as the tests were conducted in an environment highly advantageous to the testers. They had complete access to the devices' source code and unlimited time to try and crack the machines. No malicious code was found in any of the machines, but Matt Bishop, who led the team from UC Davis, was surprised by the weakness of the security measures employed. The tests were ordered by Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who has until Friday of next week to decide whether to decertify any of the machines for use in the upcoming Presidential primary election."
So before, the only people who probably knew how to crack these would have been the people who designed them, plus whoever else had access to the source code, plus probably a whole bunch of administrators who would have access to the data files during the election.
Now, as if that's not bad enough, in addition to all of them we have a whole team of hackers who have proven that they know SPECIFICALLY how to do it. And by the way, they hacked both the voting machines themselves AND the back-end remote machines that do the tabulating.
And those facts are all public knowledge now!
So if these machines were merely "ridiculously" insecure to begin with, now they're just split wide open like a dvda. Yay democracy. What exactly does Ms Bowen need until next Friday to fucking think about?
And please, can we quit calling them "computer security researchers"? What's wrong with hackers? When did we start on the euphemism treadmill?
If voting is the core of a democracy then the transparency of the process MUST be paramount. Chuck out the whole concept of voting if average citizens have to understand and correctly interpret the latest whiz-bang technology.
Considering how strong the push for voting machines is, you'd think there's something terribly wrong with paper ballots. What is it? To me, they seem to work fine, and knowing the system for counting the votes doesn't let you compromise the impartiality of the system. What benefit do these voting machines offer that justifies the risks?
"Voting machines are the non-solution of a non-existing problem" (not my quote, I heard it somewhere).
The quote is completely right.
a) What is wrong with pen&paper voting?
b) Voting machines do not solve any problems: If we say for example a) was about the money: Voting machines cost all-in-all more money than pen&paper voting.
...it's more that likely those most interested in tweaking the system have already got the keys.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm
The overview by Matt Bishop is actually quite an interesting read. In it, he says that they could have found more problems with the three systems, but they were limited by time: The short time allocated to this study has several implications. The key one is that the results presented in this study should be seen as a "lower bound"; all team members felt that they lacked sufficient time to conduct a thorough examination, and consequently may have missed other serious vulnerabilities. In addition, he also cites the lack of proper information from the vendors as another problem.
It should also be noted that a fourth vendor, Election Systems and Software (ES&S) missed the deadline for submitting their systems for the review. I'll be cynical and just assume that they decided to skip the initial review than to have a bunch of computer researchers hack their systems.
They already used the census to make Jedi an official religion. Now add seriously insecure electronic voting machines, and we could wake up and find geeks have made George Lucas the next President. But I for one would welcome our new overlord. I'd like to see how a new Secretary of State Jar Jar Binks handles Iraq.
The tests were ordered by Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who has until Friday of next week to decide whether to decertify any of the machines for use in the upcoming Presidential primary election."
:-P
Looks like she won't need to decertify any, then. They'll all be able to deliver the Republicans the next election.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
All things considered... that means those machines are PERFECT for a voting in US, right?
(Ok, now you can mod me down...)
The only secure machine is one that is OFF. If it isn't off then I'm always going to bet on the hacker. IANAP, but I feel very sorry for the challenges that programmers face. They have to review and analyze code for bugs, flaws, and features, they have bosses that demand profit and features. Those 1337 boys only need to find one flaw, the programmers have to find and fix all of them. I'm not surprised at all that all of the machines were cracked, given a high enough profile, the right conditions, and a motivated h4x0r any system is vulnerable.
load "$",8,1
Hey, do something for your country and humanity, send letters to your representatives or whatever you can do to stop this electronic voting madness. Posting on slashdot won't do much.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I have a post from three years ago (#8944789) detailing how stuff works here in Brasil, for your entertainment:
Oh, yes, I will repeat myself over and over...
... when you get your first job. If you are a mandatory voter (literate person from 18 to 65) you have to go to Electoral Court and register to vote. In the process of registering, you receive the "Título de Eleitor" (voter id), in which you have the number of you voting section. To change jobs, and specially to get a government job, you have to prove you are a registered and regularized voter (you voted in the last election, or regularized your voting situation after it).
by hummassa (157160) on 2004.04.22 20:06 (#8944789)
Till these topics die.
I live in Brasil. We have had voting machines in the last 12-14 years (yes, twelve to fourteen -- it depends the size of the city you are in). Brazilians here: the first election here in Belo Horizonte to use the machines were the mayoral (and city council, state representation, governor, house and senate) before FHC was elected (as I count it, 2 years + 8 years + 1 1/2 = 11,5 years). I know it, because I was "mesário" (election "table" official? election "clerk"? what is a good English translation?) in the previous election, and in the two subsequent elections. IIRC, there were electronic ballot boxes in Rio and Sao Paulo in the election before that (the only two cities larger than Belo Horizonte).
Our voting machines are mainly of three different (internally) models: (a) the old ones, that use VirtuOS (*) as the OS, (b) the new ones, that use WinCE as the OS, and (c) the newest and deprecated ones that have the second printer to print your vote, show it to you inside a clear acrilic case, and mix it with others inside the machine.
Externally, all of them look roughly the same: a box similar to the old "portable computers" of the eighties, with a 5-6" diagonal LCD and a big numerical keypad in the right side of the screen, that has, besides the 0-9 keys, "confirma" (ok), "erro" (cancel), and "branco" (white).
The electoral process (from the point of view of the voter) begins
In the election day, you scan the newspapers (or the Superior Electoral Court website), search for the address of your section, and go there. No, there is no transit vote, you can only vote at that address. If you can't get there, you'll have to "justify" your absence.
At the section, you will present your voter id to one the "mesários", and if you don't have it on you, you can still vote (you can show other valid id), but will be delayed. The mesário will search for your name in the vote-ticket sheet, and annex it to your id while you vote. You will sign a receipt in a sheet, and proceed to the voting "booth". Another "mesário" will type your voter id # in a remotely connected keypad, setting the machine in the "ready to vote" mode.
The voting "booth" is really only a desk with the voting machine over it, facing nobody else in the room, and sometimes with a cardboard "cover" around it. You will "dial" the numbers of the candidates, in order. when you dial all the digits of one candidate, a star-trek-like chime rings, his/her face will show up in the screen, and if you digited it right, you hit "ok". otherwise, you hit "cancel" and start over. Afte
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Security researchers discovered a shocking flaw in the paper ballot system, they found that there were a number of flaws including one that said they could discount any number of votes just by saying the ballots were spoiled when counting! They also discovered that it was possible that overseas soldiers could send in multiple votes and have them counted!
Jeb Bush discounted these flaws as unmerited after he was seen at the security conference this was revealed taking notes.
Joking aside I have to wonder about the methods they use to hack into these ballot PCs. Most of the hacks I've seen required physical access to the PC and opening it up. If you removed all the ports for voting machines and secured the monitor connectors, you could simply put the PC in a box with a tamper proof seal and have a decent level of security. When the votes are counted, you have election inspectors observe the seal and do a quick checksum test to ensure the code hasn't been altered. Sounds secure enough for me and it would still be much quicker than paper ballots.
That's not true! Voting machines are the solution to the existing problem of "how to make sure one is elected".
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I was looking at Diebold's present and past leadership, donations, and the paybacks they got. It looks like the Skull and Bones membership roster at Yale where Bush went:
Louis V. Bockius III, Christopher M. Connor, Richard L. Crandall, Eric C. Evans, Gale S. Fitzgerald, Phillip B. Lassiter, John N. Lauer, William F. Massy, Walden W. O'Dell, Eric J. Roorda, W. R. Timken, Jr. and Henry D. G. Wallace
Perhaps these voting machines were simply portfolio builders for the wealthy elite.
What about recounting and/or validating e-votes and still maintaining absolute secrecy about who voted for who? In the shadow of security, this was the main question that I believe went unanswered when Estonia (or whatever it was) went through with this. Seems to me e-voting requires an impossible amount of trust in the system.
Don't be crazy anymore!
An ATM is NOT anonymous. A record is kept of each withdrawal/deposit/transfer/... by each user. The security cameras have been used to identify ATM users & bystanders.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
I know this a old technology, but why not store all the software and voting results in PROM (programmable read only memory). The chips could have their serial numbers inventoried before and after the election. The integrity of the software could be verified after the election. Once you have writing to a section of the chip it is not going to change (meaning don't use EPROM (solid case, not just a sticker) or EEPROM). Even if the chips are still not made, I am sure someone is willing to custom make a "few" chips for the US government / government contractor.
I know the software is fairly complicated (not sure how many MB), but you might also be able store only part of the software in the PROM. Use something like a ATM, with the button on the left and right sides. But only storing part of the software on PROM leaders you right back to the original problem (I am sure you could manipulate the results and no one would know, such as slightly moving the location of the names on the screen, so a different person is name is next to button at the side of the screen).
You could also use some procedure controls to prevent the above from happening. Have a person (Rep. and & Dem. Voting Official (Maybe a Ind. if need be)) go and record the tabulated results every few hours. Then at end of the day the procedure could have machine challenged (a varying number of times) with known known but a random voting pattern then compare the tabulated results with the expected results (which you can calculate from the previous results and the known challenge voting pattern). This could be done through out the day, but care would need be taking to not include the results in the election. If you let the machine know it is being challenged, then it can manipulate the results and you are not testing the proper part of the code. A stamp in the PROM results could work, since the remainder of the machine does not know exactly what the PROM section is doing (or at least that way I would make it).
The decertifier always has more authority than the certifier is the weakness of the certification is demonstrated.
The decertifier can retire the certifier's licence and suspend the enterprise's certification.
Your votes don't count anyways so who cares, thanks to the electoral system, it doesn't matter how people vote in Arizona or many other states. So, until every vote counts, just sit back and enjoy the show...
Electronic voting machines will never be foolproof, nor will paper-based ballots. We should make reasonable and prudent efforts to protect BOTH methods from manipulation or accidental errors. I've never understood why the machines cannot be made to print out the voters selections in the booth for review before the voter presses the submit button. If the paper receipt matches his selections, only then will the voter submit his votes. Next, he deposits the paper result in a box to be used to verify the accuracy of the electronic results. The vote records are still anonymous. The methods and procedures to check the paper versus electronic result can vary from full-on record by record checking for verification before making an election official, to simple statistical sampling of small numbers of paper ballots to electronic vote results. These can also vary by geographical regions, with statistical methods applied to ward, county, state, or national elections to trap for inconsistancy. Worst case scenario is that results are not official in any shorter period of time than before, but this type of checking would only be necessary if there were problems. This combines both methods to actually IMPROVE the accuracy of voting because it uses 2 separate procedures to verify results. To assume that electronic voting somehow has to be hacker-proof is ridiculous. Hell, I could simply walk in and steal paper ballots from the precincts I voted in; the people designing the paper ballot can alter the layout to favor one candidate over the other; ballot counters can simply declare a paper ballot invalid - the list is practically endless. Having said all of this, the voting machine companies do need to produce good-quality and RELIABLE hardware and software that doesn't break and at least counts votes accurately. I cannot understand why that is so difficult. I was in the point of sale industry for years, and all of the same basic equipment was used, and it was not that hard to write software that would add correctly.
Paper elections can and has been taken over. I am not so sure at this time if any in the USA are, but Texas, Florida, and Chicago had a LONG TIME well deserved voting fraud issues. That is why EVERY box has 2 or more ppl going over the vote, with each person coming from 1 of the 2 major parties (interestingly, they are not required to have a person from all parties that are running candidates, just from the major parties). The current elections since 2000 (probably before), have shown how easy it is for general election fraud. In particular, in Florida, the gov. was not allowing votes from anybody with the same name as criminals in high democrat counties only. In ohio, they had 3 ppl (democrats) certify an election by picking certain boxes, counting them before hand, and then using those for their "random" tests. They were suppose to pick a number of random boxes and check their results as well the count. They just did not feel like doing it.
There are VERY good reasons for going to computers. Sadly, not only has the computers obviously not been designed and built well, but the vetting process in nearly all states has left a LOT to be desired. In nearly all cases, the groups have been willing to accept systems that several major companies thrust on us. What fascinated me, and should have been of interest to all the groups, is that NONE of these major machines wanted back-up paper system added in. In ALL cases, it would be their paper (i.e. get to gouge), and of course, they would be required to have somebody around to handle things (at least at the county level). This would be a recurring revenue stream for them. And yet, they fought it esp. diebold. That should be making ALL of those groups nervous, and instead it takes a judge to be looking at this issue.
The computer systems ARE the right idea. The choice and implementation have been disasters. Welcome to Amerika.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Somebody needs to take a cluestick to the heads of a whole bunch of county election officials. They are "concerned" about this report. Because it goes to the heart of the legitimacy of our election system??? NO! Last thing on their minds. They are worried that having to switch to a proven reliable and secure system would inconvenience them. The lot of them ought to be tossed out on their ears.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Ok Slashdot people, How would YOU implement electronic voting?
RegardselFarto
Paper ballots do have their problems. People don't always mark them consistently. Sometimes they mark one candidate then try to rub it out and mark another. The paper ballot was hard to read by electronic means and manual counting was too time consuming to get the quick results most people wanted.
Punch cards that people have to do the punching on don't always get punched right (remember the hanging chad problem). Sometimes people start to punch one hole, and realize they are in the wrong hole or change their mind real fast and try to punch another instead. Sometimes 2 or more holes are punched. Sometimes holes are punched partially. In most cases people could check, but they don't, or don't really know they should.
Computer voting was intended to eliminate these things. But that's its fundamental misguidance. Instead, it should be used to enhance them and correct the issues.
Voting station computers should do nothing more than assist a voter in creating a reliably readable paper ballot. The voting station should not be networked, and not even have any storage space. It would be an embedded machine booted from flash that is hardware wired to be unwritable, or booted from a CDROM or equivalent. It should boot very fast (embedded developers know how to do this and bring a minimal system and application up in a second). It should be rebooted between each voter.
The voting station would have a simple single sheet printer and an LCD flat screen with touch sensors. The voter would "touch" their votes and always have the ability to go back, or even jump around randomly to various offices/issues to vote on. Once done, the voter can press the "I am finally done" button to print the choices on paper.
What is printed on the paper is a combination of scannable text and bar codes with strong checksums (SHA1). The text shall be human readable (although in big elections some people might need optical reading assistance). Visually impaired people can ask for a poll worker to read back their ballot to them.
The next step is the paper ballot is taking to the reading station. The ballot is read in by another computer with a scanner. This computer scans the text and reduces it to a set of simple vote codes. These vote codes are checksummed and that is compared against the bar codes. If there is a mismatch, probably a scanner error took place, or the ballot was damaged or smudged. It flashes and beeps a warning the the ballot is not readable. This may require the voter to re-do another ballot (this one is marked as bad and the voter is given another sheet and front-of-line access to a voting station).
The scanner keeps tallies and may send results to a central office. Larger voting places may have more than one scanner and tallies will be done by a central computer. The paper ballot is then inserted UNFOLDED into a locked box.
The voter gets a receipt for having voted, but does NOT get a copy of what votes they made. If they want to remember their own votes, they must make their own notes themselves. The reason for this is that no voter should have any official statement of who they voted for to ensure no voter can "prove" to someone else who they voted for. This has been a long time standard to impede vote buying/selling, and should not change.
The computers that tally the votes could give nearly instant 100% results shortly after polls close. But that's not the end of it. Those results are not certified. The voting officials will, in the next few days, monitor the process if re-scanning all the paper ballots to ensure the results are consistent. If they are satisfied of this, then they certify the election results. If there are any issues, then the paper ballots can be manually checked.
This process is still paper based, and still just as auditable and recountable as any paper based system. It gains the avantages of consistency in the marking of ballots. Instead of being hand marked, they are "computer marked" (in a way that humans c
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
How could this have been modded "insightful"?
Aren't you glad it is public knowledge now how rediculously insecure those machines are? These machines should never have been used and the people you call "hackers" have done what the government should have done BEFORE using them for black-box voting.
Are you advocating security though obscurity where the safety of the democratic process depends on a small group of people we trust not to abuse their position? I'd much rather have a verifiable solution.
I say someone in the government is finally doing the right thing here.
Not to stick up for machine voting, or the older alternatives. But I've never seen anybody run a test against the established voting systems, and the supporting systems by which humans handle the votes. The voter registration system is so open to manipulation that it's basically meaningless.
I hate to go out on a limb here, but my guess is that the entire election system is incredibly insecure, and that there has been vote fraud going on for decades. New voting machines won't make it any better or any worse. Machines don't manipulate elections, people do.
Since I have on my computer the software for many of the major voting machine companies and I worked reviewing it for one of our big US States, (Not California) I might have a thing or two to say on the issue.
The first thing to understand is that the audits under the voluntary national standard for voting machine software do nothing about securing a ballot. The next thing to understand is that the public authorities don't want secure software on voting machines. -As politely as it can be said- Who in the hell do you think steals elections? --- Not the voters I can assure you! It is election officials. Next you have to understand that the purpose of modern voting machines isn't to prevent errors, it is to eliminate any evidence that they happened. Next you have to understand that some company or another wants to sell all the machines to run the election and that they don't want the election officials to be able to buy machines by another brand without having to go to the cost of ripping out the entire system by its roots and halting the whole world. In short they want to hold the political agents hostage to their company and make them pay through the nose on every election. How else does a scanner machine which might be worth $200 become a machine worth $30,000?
Now that we have identified the motives in play here and there may be a few more nasty habits around like companies wanting to control political events..... Lets get down to the brass tacks here! Any election system worth anything should have some of the following attributes and possibly some more.
(1) It must be machine independent. So that any device that fails can be easily replaced.
(2) It must be transparent in its software where anyone can see the code and see that it does what it says.
(3) It must be receipt based where it can be checked by additional 3rd party methods. Recounting must be possible and not just memory buffer checks.
(4) It should be isolated from external attack only reporting via network and protected from intrusion by device isolation. This means no USB drives and no standard internet connections etc.
(5) It must be custody of data prevented from having the political authorities being able to destroy the evidence of an election fraud.
Making elections report totals quickly accurately and with receipts and such is no problem. Technically this is very easy. I probably could write in a few days the structure and code it in a matter of months myself. I would get nowhere because the political leaders would find their methodology of stealing elections in great trouble. Unless the voters rise up and get really angry on this one, expect the development of a silent dictatorship in which you hold elections and keep on loosing to the powers that be. (Maybe it already is here????)
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
As a new computer science student, the security problems of the voting machines has always baffled me. Is it really that hard to secure a machine that simply adds 1 to the item I tell the machine to add 1 to? It is reasonable to assume that the easier the function, the easier it is to make that function secure. So why is it so difficult?
When you have finished this cup of coffee your adventure will begin again.
No malicious code was found in any of the machines...h tml , yes it is the 'obfuscated v contest'a nzky.c no? thats what i thought!
guys have a look at this:
http://graphics.stanford.edu/~danielrh/vote/vote.
it was a contest designed to show that it is possible to write programs that look perfectly innocent in a code analyses but that do have a covert (malicious) function - in this case the programs had to count votes and do it correctly under normal circumstances but produce scewed results on the day of the election.
Have a look at the winning entry: can you spot it? http://graphics.stanford.edu/~danielrh/vote/ppark
This is a valid comment, but is modded into oblivion for some reason...
Interesting what you get when you attempt to make a system foolproof. All this came about because one state didn't have effective rules on what amounted to a 'vote' in a close election, and because somebody couldn't figure out how to lay out a ballot so a bunch of retirees wouldn't end up voting for the wrong candidate. Now in the quest for perfection, we're getting a system that's even more vulnerable to manipulation and failure. I said at the time that we should just go back to the "blacken a dot" type ballots, but noooo .... Our CA state and local officials were sold a bill of goods by Diebold, saying how impenetrable their security was, how swell it would be when you could just upload all the electronic results and have a near-instant tally, blah blah blah. Then the first election we had here in my city, it turns out the voting machines had been sitting in people's garages for so long they lost their programming and computer-savvy voters who happened in were assisting in rebooting them and restoring their programming. Debacle doesn't even begin to describe this whole mess.
my guess is paid off jerk government shills did the down modding on behalf of their "superior beings" under orders from loftier heights. Can't have the rabble knowing about how they are being manipulated all the time, might cut into profits!
For this machine, it doesn't matter if someone can hack the machine ... the best they can achieve is a denial of service attack by spoiling the election. If the electronically tabulated result doesn't match what is on the roll of paper (combined with the tally of how many people voted that is kept by the humans who handle the sign-in process).
In the SF Chronicle headline.
From reading comments in the Politics section; I didn't know there were so many neo-conservatives with unrealistic and severely flawed logic in the IT business.
46137
I stopped reading your post after I read your subject because if you really believe that paper ballots are less secure than computer voting, you have got something very wrong - or maybe I have, because I can't think of any way to falsify all ballots at once if you're using paper, but this is trivially simple if you're using computers.
First of all, I believe that paper ballots and electronic voting are simply equally insecure, but that you can make -- with proper procedure -- electronic voting less insecure than paper ballots. More on that on the end, so read on (and try to read on my old post, too, you'll find it interesting).
Second, come on, you have not seen BSG? It's quite simple, with a sleight of hand, to exchange a ballot box for another one, falsified and stuffed with the votes we want. Presto! You exchanged all votes at once for that box.
With electronic voting, you can't even verify whether it was counted correctly (you can neither have a look at it while it is counted, nor can you make a recount without accounting for the possibility that all the numbers changed) - the only check you have are the exit polls, and they can be doctored, too, or - easier - will be denounced by the winner as incorrect even when they have a good track record. With paper ballots, however, everyone can come and watch over the counting (at least it's that way here - could be that it's illegal to do that where you are).
Recounting is: (1) as the recent USofAn history shows, unpractical, and (2) only at most as reliable as the counting. So, I think recounting is overrated. But anyway, no, we can watch the count here. But as I said, in US 2000 election, no one (or at least not enough people) cared enough to show up. You cannot see if your vote counted correctly in a paper-ballot vote, too. Why? Because vote anonymity is important to democracy (so your boss can't fire you if you vote the "wrong" way [*]).
My point is: timing is everything if you want to cheat in an election. Electronic voting shortens uncertainty time, so it's harder to cheat in an electronic voting election. The part that is really important (at least IMHO) in cheating an election is tabulating the votes -- at least one 1970s BR election I can recall had a deep tabulation-cheat-suspicion (nothing was ever proven, of course) and I am pretty sure that other countries have their tabulation-cheat stories, too (fictional districts added etc).
As for the machines, and the procedure, all I have to say is: read my post -- the important thing there is that the work of checking things up is thorough and distributed, so big errors do not go unnoticed. When I worked at the DA's office during an election, we checked exaustively each of the machines in our voting district. We changed the date, started the machines, summed them up, uploaded the results to the central computing, saw the results on each machine. The machine did not have any way of knowing it was not election day: some of them we punched votes all day long, so it could not know oh, I have few votes, so it must be check day instead of election day; some we tested once, some twice, some ten times and nome not at all. We kept detailed records of the testing. If most small-town DAs and electoral judges were so thorough as we were, I think it was impossible to miss any tampering. At election day, we checked and rechecked every single seal on the machines, and more than once, we threw out one machine because the seal was not signed or misaligned (we can use paper ballot boxes as a backup, but usually the backup machines -- all tested, too -- were enough)
I could write more, but I think this suffices to see that voting machines will always be less secure than paper ballots. So, I'll keep my paper ballots, thank you very much. And if I see a voting machine in my district, I'll make use of Article 20 (4).
We can agree on disagreeing, b
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
- It should HELP prevent fraud.
- To make it easier on the end-user. In particular, better designs and easier to follow.
- Ideally, move the names around from user to user from voter to voter. By rotating who is in the top row, they remove some of the stupid things that voters do. (oddly enough, I have heard from several ppl that they vote like they take a test; If they do not care, they vote a particular row).
- It should make the end tally quicker and easier.
Note the 1'st one there. The computer can help. Why? because it can track a voter from district to district. We allow these computers to cross connect and now we know who has voted where. Ideally, publish the length of time on the web, and offer voters the chance to go elsewhere (I was thinking about the fraud in ohio where in the hard core (and most populous) dem area, they had 2 booths, while in nice republican areas, they had 2x the number of booths that was required in all polling spots). Florida and Ohio showed nicely why paper voting is not a guarentee of a good election.Most importantly though, the computers should NEVER be fully trusted. That means that there should be a paper trail that take priority over the computers. The idea should be to NEVER lose or miscount the votes.
I always keep in mind probably the most important words spoken by an idiot; paraphrasing: the vote does not count. It is the vote counter that matters. That is a good sign of what we have to beware of.
As I said before, the computer systems ARE the right idea. The current implementations are wrong. These need to be open, they need to be easier to use, proven (or at least more than what we currently see), and most importantly, they need a check and balance.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, these problems aren't exactly new. Take a look at this report by Matt Bishop dated Feb/2006: "Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuBasic Interpreter" http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/accubasic .pdf
And please, can we quit calling them "computer security researchers"? What's wrong with hackers? When did we start on the euphemism treadmill?
Kinda like the diff between good cops and pigs, no? Each has more power than the average joe and the ability to use it to influence events. Do you really want to live in a world without the good guy hackers staying abreast of deliberate, inadvertent or just plain overlooked security flaws in the products you install on your machine, or trust your government to install on their machines that affect the outcome of elections and ergo, all aspects of life that you care about? Maybe you don't give a shit about about the dwindling democracy, but some people do and it is our collective responsibility to ensure that the leaders we collectively elect get their without blue or red assholes trying to game the system any more than it is already gamed.