Hacker Exposes Parts of Florida's Voting Database

Dangerous_Minds writes "Some people feel that elections can be rigged and votes tampered with. One hacker, who goes by the name of Abhaxas, decided to prove that votes aren't secure by exposing parts of the Florida voting database. Said Abhaxas while posting the data, 'Who believes voting isn't tampered with?'"

Comments

This is public election data, not voting data

[thesandbender]

If anyone took 30 seconds to scan this scandalous "voting" data it's very apparent that this is data about the elections and not the actual voting or voters. All of this data can and should be public knowledge (e.g. Elections, Candidates, Races, what special interest groups are working the polls as well as voter statistics). A quick google search will give you almost all of this data because want it should be public knowledge.

This would be a story if this data wasn't available.

Re:This is public election data, not voting data

[thesandbender]

I'm assuming you're not from the U.S. A "race" here is referring to the election and not the ethnicity of the person or person(s) involved. The literal translation in this sense in "contest"... i.e. the "race" to the finish line. You'll notice that there's a "race" lookup table which contains Sheriff, Councilman, etc. It's referring to those "contests", not black, white, asian, latino, etc.

Re:Good job on behalf of the hacker

[Anonymous Coward]

In mexico we require ID and put some ink on the persons thumb. it's kinda hard to remove. no impossible by any means, but I'm sure someone could come up with something harder to remove, that would last for a few days.

Re:So what if pollworkers passwords are compromise

[thesandbender]

You're misunderstanding "poll workers"... these are lobby groups who are outside the polls trying to influence your votes, look at the pollworker_links table later in the dump. They're tracking who was there and who they represent... which is exactly what they should be doing. And yes, this data should be public (by law actually).

Re:Total non-sequitur

[ohnocitizen]

I can counter your right wing sources with left wing ones:

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/03/27/153179/report-from-poll-taxes-to-voter-id-laws-a-short-history-of-conservative-voter-suppression/
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/05/10711/voter-suppression-bills-sweep-country
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/06/voter-fraud-or-voter-suppression
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/15/voter_suppression

While I do think there is some voter fraud in the modern era, and would point to Florida in the 2000 election and Ohio in 2004, it is often twisted and blown out of proportion to fuel a hysteria that we need to make it harder to vote. So we end up with laws that make it harder to vote for those who vote Democratic. I find it hard to believe that is an accident.

What we need is a way to verify votes that does not end up constituting an effective poll tax, and keeping people who have a right to vote from the polls. I wonder if any slashdot readers have any suggestions? I'd be quite hopeful on that account, some rather clever people read this site and have left encouraging comments on past articles about voting.

Re:None of this (except the passwords)...

[jc42]

Why not just pencil in an X next to the candidate's name like they do in other countries?

Because that wouldn't produce income for the top people in the companies that make the electronic voting equipment. And, of course, those are people who have contributed to the re-election campaigns of the legislators who have promised to push electronic voting.

Also, it's pretty well understood that secret, verifiable elections aren't exactly popular with "incumbent" legislators.

Here in the US, we had that amusing case a couple of elections ago, where the CEO of Diebold (one of the main makers of electronic voting equipment) promised the Republicans in Ohio in writing that he would deliver Ohio to the Republicans in the next election. He delivered, too.

Actually, I think the best comment on this issue was this story. (For the benefit of the whoosh-impaired, I'll point out that this is a satirical site. ;-)

Re:Good job on behalf of the hacker

[anorlunda]

Everyone of your example's senior citizens is collecting Social Security, which has very strict requirements for identification.

What the hell are you talking about? I'm a senior collecting SS. I applied online and was then interviewed by phone. No scrap of ID was ever requested. I have a drop box snail mail address. I never needed to appear in person. All I needed was a SSN and an account for deposits.