Slashdot Mirror


Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States (vice.com)

Kim Zetter, reporting for Motherboard: The nation's top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them. In a letter sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) in April and obtained recently by Motherboard, Election Systems and Software acknowledged that it had "provided pcAnywhere remote connection software ... to a small number of customers between 2000 and 2006," which was installed on the election-management system ES&S sold them.

The statement contradicts what the company told me and fact checkers for a story I wrote for the New York Times in February. At that time, a spokesperson said ES&S had never installed pcAnywhere on any election system it sold. "None of the employees -- including long-tenured employees, has any knowledge that our voting systems have ever been sold with remote-access software," the spokesperson said. ES&S did not respond on Monday to questions from Motherboard, and it's not clear why the company changed its response between February and April. Lawmakers, however, have subpoena powers that can compel a company to hand over documents or provide sworn testimony on a matter lawmakers are investigating, and a statement made to lawmakers that is later proven false can have greater consequence for a company than one made to reporters.

9 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Re:wow digging by Penguinisto · · Score: 1, Informative

    Personally, I'm not as worried about Oregon's voting computers as I am the potential for fraud across the far weaker link - all of Oregon votes by mail. All it would really take is a properly-bribed postman or two to collect a few spare ballots (and discard a few ballots from parts of his route that vote heavily for The Other Guy), a handful of pencils, a roll of stamps, and a few cohorts willing to help you 'vote'. The voter would never know that anything was amiss.

    (there's other ways that mail-in ballots are open for fraud, but this is one that comes to mind. The envelopes are unique, big, and easy to pick out.)

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  2. Primal scream by Catbeller · · Score: 4, Informative

    I TOLD YOU SO GOD DAMN IT.

    Why would you assume they wouldn't install a backdoor? WHY??? Changing election totals gave them trillions of dollars in tax cuts and complete power.
    Don't talk about open-source replacements. Any solution with electrons will be hacked and controlled. Go back to paper, the way Canada does, or did before the Tories rammed e-voting in. I wonder why, I wonder.

  3. Re:wow digging by layabout · · Score: 3, Informative

    Personally, I would be more concerned about a properly bribed election official or two losing votes in a voting machine or even worse, a voting machine with remote access https://www.newsweek.com/elect....

    This article from Vox highlights one of vote-by-mail strengths which is that it is very distributed and hard to tamper with at large scale. It's second strength is that is a fair process making voting accessible to anyone who is registered to vote. No need for polling places or special times and days, only a voting deadline of when your vote must be in an order to be counted. https://www.vox.com/policy-and...

    of course, if you want to steal an election, here's your how to: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018...

  4. Re: wow digging by jeff4747 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's not just the ID itself, but the supporting documentation.

    A new copy of my birth certificate costs $50, or I have the option of traveling 2000 miles to get a free copy at the county's offices.

  5. Re: wow digging by jeff4747 · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, they don't. They verify that the name you gave them is a registered voter. And that's all they do

    Actually, they verify name and address, and that you have not voted yet.

    Btw, think voter ID is gonna fix it? Guess what you need to produce a fake id? Name and address.

    It's a well known open secret that liberals routinely bus "voters" around on election day

    If this was actually happening at a large scale, it would be easy to catch and result in a lot of convictions. Yet there have been 0 people caught transporting false voters.

    In-person voter fraud is extremely rare. Those that do it and are caught are not all members of one political party. In fact, there's been slightly more Republicans caught doing it in the last few years, largely because of false claims like the one you make here.

  6. Re: wow digging by Bruinwar · · Score: 3, Informative

    What's really racist is the idea that minorities are just incapable of getting an ID.

    My step son turned 18 & never got an I.D. He didn't drive (or fucking work) so he never bothered. He wanted to vote. Getting all the documents together & getting him to the office to get a state I.D. was quite challenging. His dad had no idea where his birth certificate was so we had to get a copy. Without a car & financial resources, we would not have been able to do it.

    When we needed a marriage license I had no birth certificate. I had to go quite a long way to pay for a copy of it. I had a valid license, a passport, but no, they had to have the birth certificate. No public transportation would get me there & there was no way to get it for free.

    So it does not matter if your a minority or the color of you skin. What matters is the resources or the lack thereof. Voter I.D. laws & voter registration purges absolutely & veritably suppress the vote. That & lack of funding in poor areas helps a ton to keep the poor from voting. 2 hour waits only to find you're no longer registered. Florida 2000.

    --
    SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
  7. Re:wow digging by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Jill Stein demanded a recount in Michigan. Half way through they cancelled it because it was OBVOUS how much fraud had happened in Detroit (which went for Clinton much higher than it should have). Nothing was investigated after.

    Sessions attempted to look into it, but the DNC refused to corporate because they know what they did there. DNC = election fraud. Just ask Donna Brazile who ran the DNC and said they rigged their primary to have Hillary win.

  8. Re:wow digging by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 3, Informative

    Or how about "discovering" hundreds of ballots, 6 weeks after the election, in an election decided by 261 total votes?

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  9. Re: wow digging by Rob+Y. · · Score: 4, Informative

    Also, even if it weren't overly hard to get the documentation (and I'm not saying it isn't), the voter ID folks are playing the margins. If they can prevent a small number of Democrats from voting in a few states in a close election, they can pull off an upset victory like Trump's.

    That's why the Russians targeted black voters with fake "Black Lives Matter" groups either misdirecting potential black voters or telling them not to bother voting. And it worked in places like Michigan and Winsconsin. Along with voter ID laws that similarly suppressed the black vote enough to tip the balance.

    The Electoral College allocation of extra votes to small population states is a problem too. But that's in the Constitution and hard to change. Voter suppression enjoys no such protection, and needs to be fought if you believe in one-person, one-vote.

    --
    Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...