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Virginia Ditches 'America's Worst Voting Machines'
Geoffrey.landis writes: Computerized voting machines are bad news in general, but the WINVote machines used in Virginia might just have earned their reputation as the most insecure voting machine in America. They feature Wi-Fi that can't be turned off (protected, however, with a WEP password of "abcde"), an unencrypted database, and administrative access with a hardcoded password of "admin." According to security researcher Jeremy Epstein, if the machines weren't hacked in past elections, "it was because nobody tried." But with no paper trail, we'll never know.
Well, after ignoring the well-documented problems for over a decade, Virginia finally decided to decommission the machines... after the governor had problems with the machines last election and demanded an investigation. Quoting: "In total, the vulnerabilities investigators found were so severe and so trivial to exploit, Epstein noted that 'anyone with even a modicum of training could have succeeded' in hacking them. An attacker wouldn't have needed to be inside a polling place either to subvert an election... someone 'within a half mile with a rudimentary antenna built using a Pringles can could also have attacked them.'"
Well, after ignoring the well-documented problems for over a decade, Virginia finally decided to decommission the machines... after the governor had problems with the machines last election and demanded an investigation. Quoting: "In total, the vulnerabilities investigators found were so severe and so trivial to exploit, Epstein noted that 'anyone with even a modicum of training could have succeeded' in hacking them. An attacker wouldn't have needed to be inside a polling place either to subvert an election... someone 'within a half mile with a rudimentary antenna built using a Pringles can could also have attacked them.'"
The vendor specs no doubt call for fully (and publicly) audited replacements, right? It's like the (false) Russian space pen story .. how can every 3rd world country have figured out the ink/thumb solution that costs nothing while we spit into the wind with Billions?
But do they run Windows XP?
Where was Captain Obvious ten years ago? Why is there no outrage over "trivial to hack" and "we can never know"? Little else is as sacrosanct to our system of law and government as the integrity of the electoral process. That those who knew better were unable to get attention focused on this problem until now is deeply troubling.
Wow, that's pretty terrible.
And, I'm sure in no way similar to all of these new consumer electronics which want to connect to the intertubes .. none of which would use default passwords, store unencrypted data, send passwords in plaintext over a network ... hmmmm, wait a minute.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
electronics, and to a lesser extent voting machines, just exponentially increase the amount of attack vectors
of course you can still fake votes with paper voting, but then you are talking about a crazy conspiracy involving delivery trucks and teams of people. it's a lot harder to hide
rather than one well placed hacker
the poorest democracy and the most advanced democracy should all vote the same way
the overriding point is legitimacy: people have to trust their vote counted. replacing paper and pencil with a black box of gears or electronics does not engender trust
this is far, far more important than getting results a couple hour earlier
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Seems like they got what they paid for. I expect the requirements were really badly written; at that point, going for the lowest bidder will almost always land you the crappiest device.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
An attacker wouldn't have needed to be inside a polling place either to subvert an election... someone 'within a half mile with a rudimentary antenna built using a Pringles can could also have attacked them.
Damn agricultural lobby always trying to find new ways to screw with the government.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Maybe not everywhere, by in my polling location (GWU in Ashburn) they haven't had the e-voting booths for at least the last 4 years. It's all been paper/marker Scantron-type ballots.
End of line..
At least in Fairfax county in the last election we had a choice to use a paper ballot that was scanned in or the WINVote machines. Most people seemed to be using the paper ballots as I recall.
As a Fairfax county resident, those machines haven't been widely used in years. Most people get scantrons. The machines are mostly just for blind people and the non-english speakers, because they have audio out and can read the ballots in multiple languages. The last time everybody used them was 2004, which coincidentally was the last time the state voted for a Republican president.
I read the internet for the articles.
I've always supported pen&paper voting, with e-machines, if used, only being used to produce a paper ballot.
If you have paper ballots, you can still recover from things like a power outage*, you can hand count the things if necessary, and if you declare the paper 'receipt' to be the official ballot, everything is countable and can be audited.
I've had some arguments with people about how electronic machines are more usable for those with disabilities, but see above - you can only do the best you can, and the security of the election should NOT be in question. Like it's going to be in Virginia until the last of those elected through the use of these machines are gone.
Does anybody know of any 'surprises' with results going against exit polls in the state?
*I know, low probability, but voting is serious business.
I don't read AC A human right
Other states have experienced far more dire setbacks in electronic voting systems. for example
florida: system glitch refuses to authorize voting outside the presence of an AARP membership.
Arkansas: booth console ships with nuclear codes, launch access, and a hard coded option to launch against the city of Cleveland Ohio on vote for grover cleveland
colorado: never actually purchased a voting machine but a large calculator
Texas: Candidates hard coded to 6 deceased bush relatives, or a vote for Vladimir Putin
California: Voting machine powered hydroelectrically
Good people go to bed earlier.
The GOP pushed for these machines back in 2003, and now that they have control of the state gov, they want to remove these machines. Surprised anybody?
I'm betting the only conclusion we can really draw is that the vendor for these systems stopped making their regularly-scheduled payments to the appropriate campaign organizations.
I dont understand why the Feds dont pass a law that states all voting machine source code MUST be audited by professionals before an election and then compiled, checked and then uploaded to the machines.
Diebold can easily be told to go stuff it in a sock when they complain.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
One part of the system that has yet to receive the kind of scrutiny that voting machines at the polls do, are the tabulating servers that the voting machines connect to via telephones lines, or network connections to upload their results after the polls close. They're often as vulnerable as the voting machines and they're not audited. Its entirely possible to have an election rigged by targeting the tabulating servers without compromising a single voting machine at the polls, yet this part of the voting system has gone largely unexamined.
America needs to ditch the world's worst voting system.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
This is news from April ! WTF ? https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/jeremyepstein/decertifying-the-worst-voting-machine-in-the-us/
"In total, the vulnerabilities investigators found were so severe and so trivial to exploit, Epstein noted that 'anyone with even a modicum of training could have succeeded' in hacking them. An attacker wouldn't have needed to be inside a polling place either to subvert an election... someone 'within a half mile with a rudimentary antenna built using a Pringles can could also have attacked them.'"
well that's the last time I elect him governor!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
> But the 'voter id laws' of states like Texas
> a) don't let you vote at all,
O Rlly? Prett sure I voted.
>b) make it illegal to use state funded college ID or an out-of-state Driver License to prove your identity even if you happen to be a College Student living in Texas for 9 months of the year
Yes, if you've lived in Texas for nine months, and want to vote in Texas elections (claiming the benefits of Texas residency) you should get a Texas ID. You can instead choose to vote by mail in your home state. Voting for the same candidate twice, in two different states, is frowned upon.
> c) make it very difficult to prove your ID and COSTLY in both time and energy.
Dropping your ballot in the mailbox is SO difficult and expensive. The mailbox is all the way outside! Damn you libs are lazy MFs. (No ID required for voting by mail.)
If you choose to vote in-person, it's convenient that you ALREADY needed to have yoir birth certificate handy to register for school, because yes you will need it if you want to stop by the DMV to get your FREE voter ID (only needed if you don't have a DL, other state ID and want to vote in pereon).
Wait! I thought all voters are honest people, and since we don't need voter ID laws, then insecure machines shouldn't be a problem either.
have Virginia suddenly going Blue.
Thank goodness they didn't do the more obvious (to politicians, only) thing and ban Pringles.
But I sure wish the public would demand going back to big black magic markers and paper. And for those of you (you know who you are:-)) who want to bring back the really old days and it turn it into a literacy test, make them write the name of the person they are voting for. With the way elections have turned out the last few times, it is time to seriously consider the fraud committed with these machines. I have a very hard time believing the crooks we have in office are what we really voted for.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Why bother.. The antenna is ALREADY illegal if you attach it to your part 15 device...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
virginia suspended democracy for over a decade and barely anyone cared.
Freely 2016 is no more.
It helps if you consider that the conservatives are more against 'poor people' and disproportionally targeting blacks is a matter of they're more likely to be poor.
Or, if you still want a racist answer, that they target poor people because blacks tend to be poor and they can't target them directly.
Personally, I think conservatives just hate poor people of any color, for the most part. They're mostly fine with rich and middle class black people.
I don't read AC A human right
At the sites I've voted the default choice has been, since the 90s or so, that you get a scantron form and fill out dots with a felt marker. The forms are very simple and clear. None of this butterfly nonsense or anything like the ridiculous schemes we also saw in Florida in 2000. The form is then fed into a machine and the votes are presumably optically counted, and of course, the original hard copies can be maintained for recounts, etc. It always seemed to me to be a reasonable and secure way to run an election.
I'm always asked if I want to use the electronic machines... which I think are mostly kept around for people with special needs, and I always respond that I wouldn't trust the electronic voting machines as far as I could throw them. More than once, I was answered with a knowing smirk, as if the voting official knew what I meant and agreed.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
that your government was totalitarian. Republicans and conservative would rail against it. Now they love it since they think it will keep the number of minority and women voters down.
that is just the dog whistle used to try to pretend that they are n't simple trying their best to screw over minorities and the poor.
The issue isn't the $10. You don't simply fork over $10 and get an ID; you need some proof of identity, like a _certified_ birth certificate. Don't have one? They're not free either. Moreover, you often need a government issued ID to get a certified birth certificate. That's a bit of a catch-22, right? The solution varies by state. Sometimes you can use a combination of utility bills, W-2s, car registration, bank account, etc. The first requires a permanent residence. The second requires a real job. The latter two probably required a photo ID in the first place. Almost all states allow an attorney to request a certified birth certificate, but attorneys aren't free either. The situation of not having a real job, permanent residence, and certified birth certificate is probably totally foreign to /. users, but there are a non-trivial number of (usually poor) American citizens in that situation, but they still deserve the right to vote.
Now, some states try to avoid this mess. E.g. in WI the non-driver IDs are free if you need one to vote. Also, if you don't have the documentation you need, you can fill out a form and the DMV will take care of everything -- at least in principle. I don't know how well it works; the WI DMV is already stretched kind of thin.
I have mixed feelings about all this. Voter fraud is simply not a problem in the US. (Yes, some idiots filled out fake voter _registration_ forms last election because they were paid to fill out lots of registration forms. That's not voter fraud since no fraudulent votes were cast.) Voter ID laws are there to make life difficult for poor people who tend to vote for Democrats. End of story. What's the upside? Because of the political angle, voter ID laws have lead to organizations assisting poor people to get ID cards. I don't know how effective the organizations have been, but the people who get an ID probably benefit.
and don't want to be reminded of this fact by having to read so many words describing why I mam wrong.
You do realize that even the most rigorous ID check in the world wouldn't have stopped an election from being subverted if these machines were used, right?
I'm tired of hearing biased party hacks and online wingnuts rant about "voter fraud" and what must to be done to stop it. The fact is, it's very hard to swing an election using ID-related fraud, and there's no evidence to indicate it has ever been a real problem or might have swung an election - and don't bother with that rabid reply with links to an example, it might possibly have happened once or twice in some insignificant local race somewhere, but that's completely irrelevant when at the same time WE HAVE STEAMING PILES OF SHIT LIKE THIS MACHINE BEING WIDELY USED MAKING IT TRIVIAL FOR SOMEONE TO ALTER EVERY SINGLE VOTE CAST IN ANY MANNER THEY WANT!!! So spare me the crap about ID laws being essential to combat fraud, those shouting that the loudest somehow managed to say nothing about the glaringly obvious potential for major fraud with electronic voting machines, despite those vulnerabilities being fully pointed out at the time by various security experts. Those detailed reports were completely ignored by the same folks claiming to be so concerned now.
The real agenda behind voter ID laws is insultingly obvious.
that you know lots of blacks and sometimes you even let them use the front door.
... that Virginia is being buried in bid for these proven systems.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Wonder if it was deliberately designed to be hacked so that voting could be manipulated. Less obvious than an explicit back door which would be an obvious red flag.
This just looks like a cheaply designed system, easily sold to a state government, and then easily manipulated by someone walking into a voting area and skewing the votes in the MS access file over wifi without bringing any attention.
The reason nobody hacks voter machines is because that is not the way to rig an election. For those of you who may suspect there is a world outside of computer screens, take a look at the 1940 screwball comedy "The Great McGinty" (rated 7.5 on IMDB).
I was a victim of voter suppression in Virginia, and I'm "white". How did this happen? I was attending the University of Virginia. A local official lied and said that students must register in their home county. There were locals who didn't want students affecting local politics. IIRC, there was a lawsuit over this. Obviously there is no remedy to recall the lost vote. What's done is done.
For the record, I support voter ID. It seems fundamental to me. The DMV will issue non-driving IDs to anybody who wants one. If you cannot get to the DMV, somebody will get you there. Virginia is no exception. They even visited my mother when she was incapacitated, checking to see if she could make a rational response to questions. It may have been a party operative; but she would have been able to register without leaving her bed, had she been able.
The arguments against voter ID based on statistics are just that--they know that certain parties might vote less frequently if they were subject to some minor inconvenience. It's a red herring though. You can also subject people to other inconveniences such as changing the polling place or the times at which polls open. Any change in the voting process is likely to make things more or less convenient for some people or others.
To reiterate though, voter ID is fundamental. You cannot ensure "one person, one vote" without it. Voter ID would not have increased or decreased the type of fraud to which I was subjected, and which is not legal by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe they should spend more time going after that, and if they're that concerned about certain groups not being registered, they're welcome to engage in the time-honored practice of giving people free bus rides, which is also perfectly legal AFAIK.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmwqnqL3Hbg well isn't that special
If I had a choice of candidates instead of identical clones, I'd really be pissed over this.
But as it is, at least it's not something that could really have any kind of measurable impact on anything important...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It all depends where in Virginia you live. In about 1/4 of the state, WinVote was the only choice until recently. And much of the rest of the state used other touchscreens that aren't an awful lot better (although none of the others had WiFi, and hence weren't vulnerable to those types of attacks). If you lived in a county where you had the choice of paper, you should count yourself lucky!
She got caught. Good. I want to see prosecution of people who commit voter fraud. But are you assuming that there must be hundreds or thousands of people who did the same thing without getting caught? Enough to materially affect the election? Seems like a big stretch to me.
I want to see the people who think it's okay to disenfranchise entire groups of people because they're not likely to vote your way get prosecuted. There is absolutely *no* excuse for the voter ID laws they are putting in place today--it's like jim crow laws, you're just trying to exclude people who won't vote for you. It's reprehensible and in a civilized society it would be criminal.
Just because they call a Duck a dog, does not mean it's not still a duck.
Yep. But it does mean that if somebody says "No ducks here! Just good old reliable dogs!" maybe you should still take a look at just what those "dogs" are.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Surprised the Democrats would allow them to get rid of these. Much cheaper and easier to steal elections than having to truck in illegals, pay off the black panthers intimidate voters, and fight voter id laws.
In New York we are required to register to vote long before the election and when we enter the polling place we are required to sign in on a sheet next to our name, address and signature.
I've been a registered voter for 30 years and have even worked on the board of elections as a polling place attendee and so far I am totally unaware of any voter fraud in this state.
I Invite anyone who is aware of a case to say otherwise with specifics please.
As for voting machines, Up until recent years we had mechanical machines with levers had to be set into a selected position indicating your selection prior to you being able to pull the handle to open the curtain so you could leave the voting booth. Within the machine the vote would be tallied with a small wheel with numbers on it that would turn. There were many of these within the machine, several hundred.
When the polling place closed the poll workers (myself included) would open the machine and one Democrat and one Republican would read and agree upon the number on each wheel and that would be tallied to paper by one Democrat and one Republican. Then the machine would be locked and transported to a secure location and left untouched until long after the election winner was announced.
As if all of that we're not enough there was one poling machine for each polling district which meant within one school building or polling place you might have anywhere from 1 to 6 machines.
All in all this was an extremely hard if not impossible system to manipulate.
>> Voting for the same candidate twice, in two different states, is frowned upon.
> frowned upon, but 100% legal.
No, it's felony. Punishable by five years in prison.
42 U.S.C. 1973
(e) Voting more than once
(1) Whoever votes more than once in an election referred to in paragraph (2) shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
It's also a state felony in most states.
I don't know why you KEEP making stuff up and posting it. Haven't you noticed the pattern by now - when you do that, I post a citation showing that you've pulled your "facts" from thin air. This has been going on for how many years now?
Or did you actually believe a DNC staffer who told you it would be okay? Some of those Democratic National Committee reps who were registering people to vote in multiple states went to prison, because facilitating vote fraud is a felony under 42 U.S.C. 1973(i).
'fraid not. You can CHOOSE to consider your "home" state to be your permanent residence, or you can decide that you moved to the new state. Voting in both, double voting for Congress, President, or any federal election is a felony - no exceptions.
I gave you the code section, so you could read it. You're a creative guy, smart in a way. If you spent half as much time reading or learning as you do thinking up creative ideas to believe, you'd know a lot of things. I bet you'd be pretty good at reading and learning things. As it is, you "know" a lot of things, but you "know" whatever idea you thought of first - most of what you know is wrong because you just thought it up, rather than finding out what's correct.
You went off on a tangent about double-voting when I took your statement:
Yes, if you've lived in Texas for nine months, and want to vote in Texas elections (claiming the benefits of Texas residency) you should get a Texas ID.
And I declared it wrong, and gave an example. Someone who is from IL who is going to college in Texas gets there in Sept, and doesn't leave until May, 9 months. Their legal residence, according to TX, for the state's tuition purpose is IL They may choose to keep an IL license, even after 9 months. And with their IL license, they may be 100% legal to vote in TX. I'm not saying they can vote both places. I'm saying that they can be legal to vote in TX with a legal and valid out-of-state ID. That's what you said was an issue, and haven't said a single thing that would indicate I'm wrong.
Learn to love Alaska
When I said "read something", I didn't think you'd need to read your own post to know what you just said. Quoting your post:
>> Voting for the same candidate twice, in two different states, is frowned upon.
> frowned upon, but 100% legal.
You're digging yourself deeper and deeper. Want to appear smart? Here's what a smart person in your position would say:
Interesting learn something new every day.
Claiming you're right and the federal code is wrong, or claiming you didn't say what you just said, does NOT make you seem smarter. In fact, it does quite the opposite. People truly are not impressed by those who doggedly insist that they're right, that's not being smart. Being smart is asking intelligent questions and learning something.