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Political Party's Leadership Election Hit By DDoS Attack

New submitter lyran74 writes "Saturday's electronic leadership vote for Canada's New Democratic Party was plagued by delays caused by a botnet DDoS attack, coming from over 10,000 machines. Details are still scarce, but Scytl, who provided electronic voting services, will have to build more robust systems in the future in anticipation of such attacks. Party and company officials say an audit proved the systems and integrity of the vote were not compromised."

5 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. What makes it really interesting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... is that the ruling conservative party is already under investigation for illegal election tampering. It would seem to me that the current Canadian government is one of the most corrupt in the western hemisphere at the moment.

  2. Re:On a side note by saskboy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Party names mean very little. When last were the "Republicans" major proponents of a republic?

    Hearing NDP all of my life, the "new" part of the name has no literal meaning, it's all just mashed in with the rest and they are simply N-D-P. They are what they are.

    --
    Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
  3. Re:On a side note by compro01 · · Score: 4, Informative

    They didn't change it. They never were the "democratic" party (There've been two of those, both in BC, both short lived and unsuccessful).

    In 1958, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (a socialist political party formed in the 1930s) and the Canadian Labour Congress (a union federation) jointly form the National Committee for the New Party to form a new social-democratic political party. The organizations surrounding the committee took up the "New Party" bit and when the party was actually founded in 1961, they decided to just keep the "New" bit as it was already well recognized.

    --
    upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
  4. Re:Make it longer by Sir_Sri · · Score: 3, Informative

    Uh... it does in this case.

    They started with I think 6 candidates. A couple dropped out in the first round, some more in the second until it was just two candidates.

    Even though everyone knew well in advance who 3 of the candidates were going to be, and you could reasonably guess the top 2, the process is an elimination rounds system until one person got a majority (of party voters).

    Basically every couple of hours was another round of voting, and the idea was to engage all the NDP membership even if they didn't want to fly to a convention. Until you actually know who's running, especially in each round, you can't vote effectively in advance. Some people did, not being NDP I'm not sure exactly how that process worked, but the idea was to see how it worked with people voting real time.

    Also, it didn't matter if it was gummed up, because the NDP have no political power (the conservatives have a majority), and they won't have to run in an election for at least 3 years so there's there's time to find a better leader if they don't like the one chosen or, lets face it, 3 years is a long time, they may have to do this again several times for any number of reasons.

  5. Re:On a side note by Formalin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Even though they've always been third or fourth place federally, they've still managed to get some things adopted that they implemented in provincial government - healthcare, for example.

    They took 1930's poor dirt-farmer Saskatchewan and made it.. well, paved and electrified, at least, in short order.

    Funny thing is, cons always run their mouths about NDP being a fiscal disaster if they ever got power, but historically, in provincial governments they've always been the most fiscally sound, rarely running deficits (our 'prudent' cons actually have the worst record). I guess it's that old line about repeating something often enough, sheep will believe it.