Slashdot Mirror
Hacking the Presidential Election
An anonymous reader writes "Security researchers at a recent summit predicted US voters will be targeted by web-based dirty tricks campaigns as the 2008 election gets nearer. Spam, botnets and phishing all provide good opportunities to mislead voters and attack rivals with little risk of being caught, they say."
In recent years, a major strategy of Republicans has been vote suppression and non-internet dirty tricks. For example, they have distributed flyers in poor African-American neighborhoods stating that the election was on Wednesday (instead of Tuesday) and that it was illegal -- and grounds for arrest and prosecution -- for anyone with an overdue rent bill to vote. These issues have been widely reported.
However, the bigger, not as well reported, scandal is in the findings of the California Secretary of State. She set up teams to do penetration tests of the all-electronic (DRE) voting machines. Although the vendors later howled about the information given the penetration test teams, the information was similar to what the US Defense Department has been giving its penetration test teams for the last quarter century.
The team that tested the Diebold machine found that a minimally-skilled malicious voter could gain administrative access to the machine and erase all votes cast up to that point in the election. The access required a tool, described as being commonly found in an office, small enough to conceal in the palm of the hand, and such that it would create no suspicion in the minds of polling place officials. The description sounds to me like a paper clip.
In the 2004 general election, the board of elections of a Maryland county normally carried by Democratic candidates reported that up to 5% of their machines (all Diebolds) were suspected of having lost some or all of their recorded votes. Could this have been the same attack described by the California penetration test team? If so, where else was it performed? What other voting machine shenanigans occurred in 2004? How did that influence the outcome in 2004?
There was also a group of statisticians who determined that the 2006 Democratic margin in winning control of the House of Representatives was significantly different from the margin calculated from exit polls. The difference was around 3%, but should have been much smaller, according to well-tested statistical concepts. This could have meant several more Democratic seats in the House. Could this have been the result of voting machine tampering similar to what the California test teams demonstrated?
Could the 2008 election be decided, not by the voters, but by the sophistication of voting machine tamperers?
Your greatest cynicism is unrealistic. I'm a pollster who spends several hours a week analyzing polling data--believe me, that's a lot more than most "informed" folks--and the biggest issue in this election is unquestionably Iraq War II: Electric Boogaloo. This is a "change" election that will turn on the perceived failures of the Bush administration. The biggest factor is Bush's 30% approval rating and the structural disadvantage it gives Republicans, particularly those who haven't been careful to distance themselves from the war (among the top 3, that's McCain).
God and abortion are important, sure, followed by gays and, more distantly, guns, but these issues are no more prominent now then they have been in the past 20 years. You've also left out three issues that feature even more prominently in the minds of voters: immigration, health care and climate change.
And if you don't think this is an important election, you haven't been paying attention. The next president will manage the disengagement in Iraq (yes, it's inevitable), some sort of health care reform (although a total re-imagining is unlikely), the immigration question, give an up-or-down on a carbon tax/cap and trade scheme, and probably appoint 2 or 3 Supreme Court justices.
In short, your "analysis" is superficial and about 6 years out of date. But I guess I'm the idiot talking politics on Slashdot. So ignore the above--RON PAUL FTW!!!!111