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Will Hackers Try To Disrupt the Iowa Caucuses?
Hugh Pickens writes "The Iowa Republican Party is boosting the security of the electronic systems it will use to count the first votes of the 2012 presidential campaign after receiving a mysterious threat to its computers in a video urging its supporters to shut down the Iowa caucuses .... 'It's very clear the data consolidation and data gathering from the caucuses, which determines the headlines the next morning, who might withdraw or resign from the process, all of that is fragile,' says Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa who has consulted for both political parties. The state GOP fears such a delay could disrupt the traditional influence of Iowa's first-in-the-nation vote. 'With the eyes of the media on the state, the last thing we want to do is have a situation where there is trouble with the reporting system,' says Wes Enos, a member of the Iowa GOP's central committee. The GOP is encouraging party activists who run the precinct votes to use paper ballots instead of a show of hands, which has been the practice in some areas so the ballots can provide a backup in the event of any later confusion about the results. 'There is really only one way — and it needn't be a secret — to help assure that results cannot easily be manipulated by either Anonymous or by GOP officials themselves,' writes Brad Friedman. 'The hand-counted paper ballot system, with decentralized results posted at the "precincts," is the only way to try and protect against manipulation of the results from either insiders or outsiders.'"
But the Iowa caucus will say they did if Ron Paul ends up winning.
Iowa has electricity and computers? You really can make anything out of corn.
Caucuses are a bad idea to begin with. They value a better organized/paid for campaign over a better candidate. Also, why are Iowa and New Hampshire so special that they get to vote first and eliminate candidtes that may do better in other areas? The first primaries should be done on a rotating basis.
Is the title a request or a challenge?
This year the GOP primary rules have changed to assign delegates proportionally instead of winner-take-all. This makes it much harder to get 50% of the delegates and win the nomination through the actual vote. Instead we'll likely end up with a brokered convention where the party leaders will elect whomever they want. This can effectively remove "undesirable" candidates whom the people want but the party doesn't (meaning Ron Paul).
Wait until it happens, then it MIGHT be a story, if it's another super slow week here slashdot !!
umm... this is the republican primary. wrong election dumb ass
The Republican party will make sure you don't receive the nomination.
Punish it for what it is: an attempted coup. Maybe this shouldn't count as "real voter fraud," but in general, democratic societies ought to punish organized voter fraud as a form of "attempting to overthrow the government." If the federal government were to hang a few people for attempting to systematically defraud the electorate, I think you'd see a lot fewer people willing to engage in the practice.
Interesting. This could have a larger more profound impact than all the Occupy movements combined, if enough people are involved.
Iowa and New Hampshire, small population states that they are, are legends of importance only in their own minds.
If Ron Paul's organizational ability holds true to form, Iowa and their caucuses will be overrun by his supporters and he will win. Iowa will then get to see how much their "first in the nation" predictor factor means in places like California, New York, Florida and Illinois where Paul has a less broad appeal.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
is do hackers need to? The Republican candidates themselves seem to be disrupting the whole affair by being a clown show.
Why should the Iowa primary have verifiable paper ballots, so results can't be changed, and then have the entire main U.S. election be electronic with questionable machines that can be?
Iowa does not deserve the influence it has over the presidential politics nor do any of the early primary states. All states should vote on the same day. Our electoral politics and government itself would look and work completely different if that were the case.
If hackers do manage to get control of the voting systems the most responsible thing they could do would be to give 100% to a write-in candidate. Ralph Nader would be a good one. That would do one of two things: turn the general population into luddites when it comes to voting, or force the establishment into truly securing the electronic voting system.
The US is, and always has been, a Constitutional Federal Republic. It was never designed as a direct democracy and indeed has many provisions to prevent such a thing. The Constitution itself is one such thing. It is an undemocratic document. It is specifically designed to be hard to alter. You can't just have 50%+1 people vote to alter it, the process requires a much greater majority, and puts power in the hands ultimately of the states, not the people or the federal government.
I know that "undemocratic" is supposed to be a scare word that gets people to agree with you but when you look at things logically you discover that the US was never designed to be a direct democracy. Also looking at the way some things have gone, you can see how maybe that is a good thing. Something to be said for the fact that a simple majority of people can't just dictate to the minority how things will be done.
So yes, the American system isn't democratic, it is republican. Not in the sense of the political parties, but in the sense of the systems of government. It has a strong democratic tradition, more than many republics, but it is still a republic. What's more it is a republic of independent states meaning that there is a level of state autonomy.
If you don't like it that's fine but then what you have to propose is a constitutional amendment to more or less eliminate large parts of the Constitution. The only way the system could become a direct democracy would be to first alter the way the government works to a large degree and second to remove this super legal document that sits above other laws.
Such a thing could be done, but you are going to need to convince a lot of people, takes 75% of the states to amend the Constitution.
You don't understand. He thinks the average democrat is as weasly and conniving as he is. If he had the brains and the balls to do it, he would absolutely try to hack democratic primaries, and so he assumes that the democrats will be doing the same thing. It seems like these people are drawn to, and thus overrepresented, in the GOP.
It also is not a secret ballot. So changing the vote would be harder since the people at the precint saw how people voted. It is pretty hard to change the vote later when the vote is a show of hands. Since it is not a secret ballot you are more likely to get things like voter itimidation by employers, and vote buying.
For an update on the hackers that will affect the Iowa vot check out the brad blog. The vote results unless manually checked are not correct. And not because of "hackers". Anon bought up a good topioc. Vote hacking. But machine votes are hackable no matter how the machine is made. The only verifiable vote is one counted by at least two sets of eyes, and verified by a third set of eyes. We the people of the united states say that in every third world country, Now it looks like we have to say it here also.
Libtard and Obooboo? How many hours did you spend coming up with those? Or were you hoping for something more before your mom told you to turn your light off and go to bed, you have to go look for a job tomorrow and no grocery store wants to hire an idiotic 40 year old.
Monstar L
According to Wikipedia, "GOP may refer to: Grand Old Party, a nickname for the Republican Party of the United States"
It would really help if this sort of thing is mentioned in the summary. US political party nicknames aren't very well-known in the Rest of the World.
While the over all system is set by the Constitution, states can change their internal system to a degree. For example you don't have to have all your electors go to whoever won the vote in your state, and indeed Maine and Nebraska don't. Some of the electors go to the overall winner, some go to whoever won various districts. Other states could so the same and change distributions to be based on districts, or maybe percentage of the total vote.
Any changes to a state's system does not require a constitutional amendment, (it might require one to the state's Constitution though).
Ah so I see you support the welfare party over the warfare party. Literally.
So...this is almost like saying that unless you can be ABSOLUTELY IRONCLAD SURE that your electronic voting system is secure, then paper ballots provide the best transparency, redundancy, and confirmatory trail of any solution?
Ironic that they're concerned enough about reliability and security to make this move for their primary, but nobody seems to care that much about the GENERAL election.
-Styopa
Good bye to more freedoms and hello to a well developing Orwellian dystopia. It is becoming more and more apparent that hacktivism, although starting out with good intentions, is becoming the frankenstein monster, eroding citizens' right to natural law and ignoring criminal code.
Machine: Please press your selection for the GOP nomination.
(Press Ron Paul)
Machine: One vote for Mitt Romney.
(Press Ron Paul)
Machine: Two votes for Mitt Romney.
he assumes that the democrats will be doing the same thing.
Right. Democrats never perpetrated outright voter fraud in Chicago and New York. Move along, nothing to see here.
Caucuses are a legacy from the days when communications traveled at the speed of a messenger. It was necessary for a participatory democracy to collect in small groups to select delegates to go to a nominating convention in exactly the same sense that the people selected congressmen and the states selected electors to cast votes on their behalf.
Subsequently, it's been codified as probably the best compromise way that individuals can still have a voice in the political process.
By the way, I'd love to hear the description of a democratic system (applicable to a country of 300+ million) that DOESN'T value a better organized/paid for campaign over the better candidate. Every one I've ever heard of does, and most have far more vulnerabilities to 'gaming' than the caucus system.
Iowa and New Hampshire are commonly recognized as bellwether states, mythologized in American culture as representative of skeptically conservative (ie not swayed easily by whim, as opposed to Conservative) yet open minded middle-class farmers and classic New England Yankees. I doubt it's really true anymore but that's why they've been allowed to remain. Don't examine it too closely or you might catch a whiff of parochialism and more than a strong scent of racism too.
-Styopa
Seems to me if everyone raises their hands on camera, it would be much more trustworthy than "lol.. whoops - we just found 7000 votes on *insert_media_here* that got misplaced. We'll be sure to add those to the recount"*
Sure, pics can be doctored up too but it's a bit harder to do when there are multiple copies. Especially if anyone/everyone observing is able to take a picture.
[*] - http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2011/04/07/whoa_prosser_gains_7,381_votes_after_computer_error_is_fixed
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The process just needs to be more transparent. Right now, we vote, then later, we read about who won.
When you vote, you need to receive a voting receipt, including an anonymous voter identifier. The results need to be posted on a public website where you can actually see your vote being counted up along with everyone else's. This ensures that your vote gets counted correctly.
Now, the only problem is to make sure fake votes aren't added. For that, each voting location needs to display, at all times, a big public count of the amount of people that entered the voting room.
There, some anonymous jackass on the internet just solved the voting system. Yet, everyone acts like the problem in unsolvable. I wonder why.
So what? That makes it OK for the republicans to do it now?
So here is a arrogant asshole who thinks he's pretty smart and probably calls himself an "intellectual". People read his snarky little comment and think to themselves, "hmm, these 'intellectuals' are not only not that smart, they're just plain assholes". Then, people like this jerk whine about how Americans are anti-intellectual.
You sir, are a first class prick. Someone who undoubtedly brings misery to all those around you.
Hi. I'm an Iowan. I'd like to point out that we're not the ones who are telling CNN to keep our caucuses in the 24/7 news cycle. That's the rest of the United States. We just want to hold our caucus and be done with it. The unrelenting campaigning is something that pretty much every Iowan finds quite distasteful. Our own electoral campaigns tend to be much nicer by comparison. When Jim Leach, representing eastern Iowa's interests to the House of Representatives, lost to Jim Loebsack, the two of them parted with a handshake, as friends, and with mutual respect. When was the last time you saw a race for national office end that way? True, by Iowa standards the Leach-Loebsack race was quite a nice and pleasant one, but it wasn't unusually so or without precedent. Compare that to how the current crop of GOP candidates is going after each other, and ... well. You might begin to get an idea of why so many Iowans are so looking forward to these caucuses being over. And that's just the half of it, really. What's as bad as the very un-Iowan nature of presidential campaigns is the two-faced condescension we face every four years from people who come into the state to butter us up to our faces just to tear us down in private.
I grew up in a town of 1500 people. My high school graduating class had fifty people. And every four years, like clockwork, a whole lot of people from out East and out West would converge on our small towns, filling up small motels that sat mostly-vacant all other times, and they'd converge on our diners and try to strike up conversations with people. Then, as soon as they thought we weren't listening, we'd hear them snigger about how uncultured we are, or grouse about how impossible it was to find good sushi or Ethiopian or what-have-you, or mock our religious beliefs. When they think nobody's listening they tell their friends back Somewhere Else about how they're "lost in flyover country" and how backwards it is.
And yet, while the rest of the country is arguing about gay marriage, Iowa is actually doing it, having decided that it is required by our State constitution. (Sure, there's been political fallout over that. But that doesn't change the fact it's what we decided.) While the rest of the country is lamenting the collapse of education, Iowa quietly continues its tradition of excellence. While the rest of the country is fearful of crime, we don't bother locking our doors at night. While children nationwide are being overprotected by parents terrified of stranger danger, we let elementary-age kids walk half-a-mile or more to school, alone and unattended.
You say we're "legends of importance only in our own minds." That's exactly the sort of thing I've heard from a lot of other people. Heard it before, and I've heard it again. I don't expect anything I've said to convince you that you want to live in Iowa. You probably don't, and I understand that. But if you want to know what I think Iowa deserves to be legendary for, it's those things. The caucuses are honestly a sideshow that's a lot more trouble than they're worth, and bring a whole lot of people into the state that I'm quite comfortable them staying away from the state.
Of course not. But it is interesting that all the talk is about how the republicans are doing it and are evil, while at the same time giving no acknowledgement to the democrats doing likewise.
I'd expect that kind of one-sidedness from Fox News.
If he doesn't, then you shouldn't be sorry for him.
everyone knows your fellow ron paul cultists will go our to vote for your lord and savior in droves. they will brave weather and ford rivers of fire to pay homage to your lord and savior. the only question is whether any other candidate has followers who are dedicated enough to beat out the numbers of ron paul cultists in Iowa.
I thought that the point of electronic voting systems was that they are insecure!
"...corrupt the database used to gather votes and crash the website used to inform the public about results"
Crashing the public facing website I could see but the actual back end database should not be reachable from the Internet.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
"If a hacker gets in and messes it all up, we can reconstruct (the results)," said Drew Ivers, chairman of Texas Rep. Ron Paul's campaign in Iowa and a member of the state GOP central committee. "It would take a little while. It might take a day or two, but we can do it."
What's left unsaid...it will have nothing to do with the way that people actually voted but hell, it'll be just like that Bush election in Florida back in the day...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Optical scanner at least as easily hacked? To what purpose? Do they then destroy the paper ballots before there is a chance for a physical recount?
And, okay, that level of distrust of the judicial system is warranted, perhaps, sometimes, but give some specifics.
And if things are that bad in the judicial system, touchscreen's lack of physical record separable from identity is still a lot easy to do social engineering on than the paper ballot, which is what you seem not to understand.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Generally, the guys at the top of a country can only do what they are allowed to do by the next strata lower.
Kim Jong Un could not suddenly open up North Korea if he wanted to. He's going to have to learn to work the old-boy network there just as his father and his grandfather did, and he is just as likely to be corrupted thereby.
If we want to change things, we have to do it ourselves, and that is either by open opposition or by working from within. Neither way is free of opportunities for corruption, but giving up lets things just get worse.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
But it is interesting that all the talk is about how the republicans are doing it and are evil, while at the same time giving no acknowledgement to the democrats doing likewise.
Kewl! Here's the new news stories:
A man in Texas shot and killed his wife this morning, before turning the gun upon himself. It must be pointed out that many women shoot and kill their husbands and then themselves, and that this same activity has occured in states other than Texas, and even in areas with strict gun control laws as well as some gay couples, both man man as well as female female
It'll make for nice long stories. It's also another form of political correctness.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I've suspected this for a long time. . . but just saying. The anti-Establishment candidate Ron Paul is polling very well in the Iowa polls, and "anonymous" suddenly decides they need to 'alter the results'
you know he was called "enos the penos" in school