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?

It really makes

[Shivetya]

me never want to take types like the OP seriously. Any tinfoil hat moment becomes fact to them because they repeat it enough to where they believe it.

The simple fact is, all the cries went suddenly away when the other guy won. All the cries for limiting money in campaigns wen the way of the dodo when it was realized both sides could just rake it in.

The real problem is that politics in America is controlled by two corrupt parties who do not care what the public truly thinks except for when it moves poll numbers leading to the election. They then modify their message without actually modifying their policies.

I find it funny that the majority of vote fraud that occurs in my state is from paper - as in absentee ballots. Tracking down people voting live and via absentee is a big job. Worse are the groups that cart people around to vote provided they vote "correctly".

If I want real fraud I can hit up any big city and see it. Certain areas of the North and Midwest are as famous for it as they are for local foods. The difference is that electronic voting suddenly turned it all on ear because they could not operate as they normally did. We really do need some way of seeing that one person gets one vote. The problem is tracing that vote back to the person without revealing who they voted for because if you could then you have intimidation.

This is why I am watching the "Card Check" issue so closely. We are getting close to codifying intimidation. I know how these people operate through friends and family who either are members or are not. It truly boggles the mind what some people will do. It almost is childish how some act and then justify it.

Yet where is the screaming over the obvious fraud that went down in Minnesota where there is statistically impossible changes in the out come. How many times do we get to count till we get it right. We already saw that effect in Washington (state) and nearly saw it in Florida in 2000; we all know they would have kept counting till they got the number they wanted.