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Video Shows Easy Hacking of E-Voting Machines
Mike writes "The Security Group at the University of California in Santa Barbara has released the video that shows the attacks carried out against the Sequoia voting system. The video shows an attack where a virus-like software spreads across the voting system. The coolest part of the video is the one that shows how the 'brainwashed' voting terminals can use different techniques to change the votes even when a paper audit trail is used. Pretty scary stuff. The video is absolute proof that these types of attacks are indeed feasible and not just a conspiracy theory. Also, the part that shows how the 'tamperproof' seals can be completely bypassed in seconds is very funny (and quite disturbing at the same time)."
"That is why I always early vote. It is on paper where I vote and that stands a better chance of getting counted correctly."
Don't be so smug. Early voting gives those who would deny your vote more time to tamper.
Let's say you mail in your ballot 2 weeks ahead of time. They are collected and sorted by precinct, and then held until election day to be opened.
Just sitting there.
And then someone drops some of the ballots from certain precincts in the shredder - you know, the ones that vote overwhelmingly for one party? Not enough to cause a lot of suspicion, but enough to make a difference in a tight race. Now, not only is your vote gone, you don't even know it - the tampering happened before election day. AND, even if it is discovered early enough, they won't know exactly WHO got screwed, so you won't get another shot.
E-voting makes it easy for small numbers of people to tamper on a large scale. That doesn't mean that good old fashioned vote rigging has disappeared. Spam hasn't eliminated junk mail, has it?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
But faking large numbers of paper ballots at many sites is a large undertaking, and harder to hide without a big (read: hard to keep secret) conspiracy. Faking electronics ballots could be done by a smaller number of people, but on a larger and less detectable scale.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
because people also don't want to be profiled for their electoral choices.
for all we know, we already are. in general, it is my understanding that many political activists are already being watched.
furthermore, i'm all for revoking a lot of these churches' tax exempt status. like Carlin said, "If these churches are so interested in politics; let them pay the same price of admission as everyone else."
"If for any reason you're not satisfied with our service, I hate you."
The running exploit could be recognized by a competent poll worker
And this highlights the flaw in electronic voting. The more complex the polling system, the more skill required to ensure fairness. In a paper ballot, anyone can act as an overseer and be confident that the votes were not tampered with while they are watching. With an electronic system that drops to, what, 10%? 1%? 0.1%? And with such a small percentage capable of ensuring election fairness, do you really have a democracy anymore?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I find this comment slightly surreal, and honestly believe only an American could have written it.
Democracy is not a commodity that you can have even though your neighbour doesn't. It is more like peace, or sanitation : everyone has it or no-one has it.
To respond to a demonstration that your democratic system has a very serious problem by saying 'Hey, I reckon I got my vote counted' is, well, bizzare.
Voting must be designed to be transparent rather than auditable. In a proper democratic election, you can observe the whole process if you want. The only bit you can't observe is when other people actually mark their ballots, but that doesn't create a corruption opportunity, because you can observe the ballot being issued to the voter and the voter putting the ballot into the ballot box. Whatever the voter did with the ballot, it is still just one ballot and will be counted publicly.
Voting systems where you can't observe one or more of the following steps are corruptible and should not be used in a democratic election: Issuing the ballot to the voter, collecting the ballot (punched cards are collected inside the voting machine: not observable), keeping the votes until the counting starts and finally counting the votes. With electronic voting systems, you can't observe any of these steps. Even paper audit trails don't solve the problem: The audit trail must remain secret during voting, so it stays in the machine, which means you can't observe it continuously until the votes are counted.
A piece of paper per voter and a couple of hours for counting votes in public: Is that really too much to ask when you elect the most powerful person in the world?