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: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.