Indian Election Officials Challenges Critics To Hack Electronic Voting Machine (thehindu.com)

Slashdot reader erodep writes: Following the recent elections in India, there have been multiple allegations of electoral fraud by hacking of Electronic Voting Machines... Two weeks ago, a party even "demonstrated" that these machines can be hacked. The Election Commission of India has rubbished these claims and they have thrown an open challenge, starting June 3rd to hack these EVMs using WiFi, Bluetooth or any internet device. This is a plea to the hackers of Slashdot to help secure the future of the largest democracy on the planet.
Each party can nominate three experts -- though India's Aam Aaadmi Party is already complaining that there's too many terms and conditions. And party leader Sanjay Singh has said he also wants paper ballots for all future elections, arguing "All foreign countries like America, Japan, Germany and Britain have gone back to ballot paper."

Comments

Hiding behind definitions

[hyades1]

Maybe the machines can't be "hacked", as we commonly define the word. But somewhere, one or more people have the keys to the kingdom: the passwords, code, access, and whatever else is necessary to make the machines do whatever they're told to do, then remove all proof they were compromised.

So all these "hack it, if you can" dares mean nothing. "Hacked" does not mean "compromised", though people with a real interest in stealing an election would like us all to forget that distinction.

Unless the machine spits out a paper ballot on the spot, and the voter can immediately rectify a wrongly-recorded vote (with proof), anything is possible. Only complete idiots would trust a vote-by-machine election without some unimpeachable method for verifying the results.