CIA Expert Decries E-Voting Security

ISoldat53 sends this quote from McClatchy DC: "The CIA, which has been monitoring foreign countries' use of electronic voting systems, has reported apparent vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about the machines' vulnerability to tampering. Appearing last month before a US Election Assistance Commission field hearing in Orlando, Fla., a CIA cybersecurity expert suggested that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his allies fixed a 2004 election recount, an assertion that could further roil US relations with the Latin leader. ... Stigall said that most Web-based ballot systems had proved to be insecure. The commission has been criticized for giving states more than $1 billion to buy electronic equipment without first setting performance standards. Numerous computer-security experts have concluded that US systems can be hacked, and allegations of tampering in Ohio, Florida and other swing states have triggered a campaign to require all voting machines to produce paper audit trails."

Comments

Re:A secret ballot cannot be done from your PC

[morgan_greywolf]

A secret ballot means that you cannot show your vote to anyone, even if you wanted to. It's surprising that governments are so quick to give up this basic guarantee of a fair election.

Well, yes, it's still possible to do electronic voting with a paper trail that keeps your ballot secret. You get in the booth, you press the touch screen, you get a reciept that says who you voted for along with an algorithmically-created 'key' code that proves that the paper is real (but cannot be reversed easily enough to determine who you were), and then the paper goes into a locked ballot box.

Verify: count the paper votes at the end. If you paper count differs significantly from your electronic vote count, you had tampering.

Re:We've missed the obvious angle

[Kagura]

OK, I know you're joking and I know I'm being a pedant, but the US Constitution says you have to be a natural born citizen of the US to be President.

Didn't the Supreme Court make a statement stating simply that Barack Obama's place of birth didn't matter--that he was chosen by the American people, regardless?