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.'"

Comments

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

But the Iowa caucus will say they did if Ron Paul ends up winning.

Re:No.

[Seumas]

Yes. Exactly this. I've been saying for almost an entire year, now, that if Paul were to win the caucuses, the GOP would suddenly claim that these extremely important and relevant events that they spend months and millions on were "not relevant and don't mean anything". Further, they would claim that it was Paul's "army" of supporters that must have "hacked" the voting machines. (Because the media and GOP only refer to Paul's supporters with loaded words like "army").

Re:No.

[artor3]

Obama ended DADT, dropped all federal support for DOMA -- not at war with gays.

Obama doesn't villainize Muslims the way the Republicans do. The fact that he uses drones to attack the Taliban is irrelevant, as they aren't true Muslims, just murderers and thugs using religion as an excuse. It is sad that innocent bystanders occasionally get killed, but if you think Obama is murdering those people, you're insane.

Obama ended torture, and would have closed Gitmo had not the Congressional Republicans blocked his every attempt. Thank the cowardice of the American people, refusing to let the big bad terrorist be locked up on our own soil for that one.

Obama has supported abortion rights and helped protect Planned Parenthood from going the way of ACORN. The fact that he didn't allow the morning after pill to be sold to minors without parental knowledge is something that only the most extreme left-wingers would fixate on. Remember this: if one more conservative gets appointed to the court, Roe v Wade will be overturned. If you care about reproductive rights, you have to vote Democratic for president every single time.

Yes, things aren't perfect. But they're a hell of a lot better. Burning down the country by putting the GOP in charge is the worst thing you could possibly do, and I can't help but think that groups like the one you keep citing are Republican plants intended to discourage liberals and get people to give up on democracy so that they can continue looting the country.

Request?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the title a request or a challenge?

Re:Request?

[PopeRatzo]

Is the title a request or a challenge?

It's an indication of just how bad the Republican field for 2012 really is. There is such widespread disgust for the current crop of GOP candidates, where even the frontrunner can't break 25%, in a year where the average Republican would walk 500 miles just for the opportunity to vote against this sitting president. The Republicans are begging for someone who's not Mitt Romney, to the point where people who aren't even invited to Republicans' 4th of July cookouts are taking a turn at the lead of the pack. It's like when kids are playing baseball and the two team captains are picking sides and there are only spazzes left and the kid who's the neighbor of one of the captains, whose mom is always trying go get them to play together, the spaz is waving his hand saying, "Ooh ooh! Pick me! Pick me!" and the team captain refuses to make eye contact, looking anywhere but at the spaz as if someone who knows how to field a grounder is standing just out of sight.

That's how bad the GOP field is. Mitt Romney is that spaz and this story of the supposed "hacker attack" on the Iowa Caucuses is just a way of creating plausible deniability when either a spaz or some other two-headed circus freak wins the thing. It's the only way they'll be able to explain it to themselves.

I just can't imagine what's running through Jon Huntsman's head right about now. A relatively normal, reasonable guy who just refuses to put on the size 22 shoes and red nose that his party seems to require since it went crazy due to there being a black guy in the White House.

YES !! NO !! MAYBE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until it happens, then it MIGHT be a story, if it's another super slow week here slashdot !!

Re:The real story here...

[vlm]

Iowa has electricity and computers? You really can make anything out of corn.

LOL you're more correct that you know. Oldest trick in the book is subsidized growers turn 10 barrels of diesel into a big pile of unneeded corn, they you gotta do "something" with it lest the state be buried under corncobs, so you burn it to get the energy equivalent of burning 2 barrels of oil worth of steam to generate electricity. Along with environmental degradation due to topsoil loss, pesticide and fertilizer overapplication, etc. Its amazing how one industry simultaneously wastes both tax money, crude oil, and edible food.

You can also turn corn oil into biodiesel. I like cooking with corn oil, smells OK and frys up tastily. Good enough smoke point too.

Computers are mostly by weight plastic, and at least some plastics are made from corn byproducts, so theoretically some of your computer is probably corn.

Then a little off topic but not too far, lots of corn gets turned into corn syrup, which gets turned into energy drinks, which combined with electricity is turned into computer software using carbon based /. reading bioreactors.

Corn is really a very versatile feedstock for chemical engineers. You'd be surprised, pretty much if you can make it out of crude oil, given an infinite supply of free subsidized corn and an infinite supply of energy from burning free subsidized corn, you can make the same product out of corn.

Sorry Ron Paul

[GeneralTurgidson]

The Republican party will make sure you don't receive the nomination.

Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Already been done without any hacking

[arogier]

Bachmann and Santorum were probably resigned to that when they entered, but Perry entered with the expectation of winning. Perry actually started the flavor of the month trend by knocking off Bachmann. For Perry the culture war isn't his message so much as the thing he was pushed into resorting to as his last agonal breaths before quitting after the South Carolina primary in a dignified manner. Entering the campaign Perry's message was simply "Texas, Fuck Yeah". Seeing 2000 and 2004 along with Texas's attempts to brand itself as America Plus, it wasn't and unrealistic expectation or strategy. It was just a dumb one.