so i guess election workers will have to pat down everyone for screwdrivers. The virus thing seems unlikely in that the card will probably be in the same machine for the whole election(one day) and not inserted in another machine, unless of course the machine is in florida then they will come infected

SHHHH. What if the Republicans get a hold of this information? They'll demand that all voting machines be changed to Diebolds IMMEDIATELY...oh wait...what? They already did? EVERYBODY PANIC.

I think our politicians have proven repeatedly that they are incompetent to the point of being unable to check their own email, let alone write malicous code capable of changing election results.

The system works!

OMG THIS THING RUNS WINDOZE OMGLOL!!!!111!!11eleven

I thought election machines were a series of tubes. If there are viruses in these tubes, can't we just inject some antiviral agent, like interferon, into these tubes? And couldn't we vaccinate these tubes before they get infected?

- Senator Stevens

As an iT guy for many years, I was quite disturbed when 1) they replaced mechanical voting devices with electronic devices, 2) that those same devices ran proprietary non-inspectable software, and 3) no paper or other copy/receipt of a vote was produced in the device.

Now, what many of us knew to be the case has been demonstrated. Of course, the same parties that would not accept that there was no proven election fraud in Florida in 2004 will continue to trust in a flawed-from-conception technical fix to what was a non-problem in the first place.

*sigh*

What I really appreciate about this is that I can already see the response: All memory cards will be numbered, and all non-election memory storage will be banned.

Ninjin: The problem isn't that a politician would be on par with a Princeton security analyst, but that there are people who'd take a very large payment (millions of dollars, even?) to create such a virus, which isn't terribly surprising. While our politicians may not be able to understand computers, they understand how to pay people to do their dirty work.

Not just election workers, but anyone who entered the voting booth to vote, could perform the hack without anyone suspecting.

these simply as Kiosks to PRINT out paper ballots that can then be counted in a seperate machine (or better yet by several humans) Then if you voted for A and the ballot that you must place in a seperate box is marked B hopefully you will notice before the vote is placed. You get the "ease" of use of touch screen machines and the varification of paper.(Of course this still won't help Florida) I realise I must be the 100,000,000th person to sugest this. Is it that it's just to damn simple and elegant of an idea to actual use it?

Would it be heresy to suggest a return to paper?

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.

"All memory cards will be numbered, and all non-election memory storage will be banned."

By November?? I wouldn't bet on it.

This is a disaster waiting to happen.

I knew these machines were bad news when the head of Diebold announced his loyalty to the Republican party and guaranteed election wins for his chosen party.

This was a very good demonstration of how the machines gets hacked.

And even though politicians may be computer illiterate, the lackys and others that work for their re-election are pretty savvy in the tech world.

As far as the printed verification when you vote, it will show you who you voted for. The hacked vote program most likely runs and deletes itself when you close the election and before you print a final tally. If it showed you voted for the wrong candidate right away, people would catch it and complain.

This is pretty scary stuff and the reason why I think that voting reform needs to take place, especially making electronic voting machines more secure.

And there are no cameras present at all where these things are stored or anything like that?? I would think these things would under tight security or somethin at all times.

The outrage at this is surprising. I thought that in Gore v Bush the Supreme Court had already decided that Democracy was a failed program, and that the Bush Administration had taken that decision as their starting point.

I have worked with the machines (some versions). They have in place a way put a numbered, tamper seal on the memory card casing.

The trick here is that the election workers at the receiving side have to veryify the seal number to the seal that was placed on the unit in the first place. This way, they can tell if it was tampered with.

Plus, that is one machine out of hundreds. True, it is a serious issue, but there a human-intervention safeguards that go into place with the local Registrar of Voters that minimize, if not nullify, the chance of anything like this happening.

Now, corrupt voting officials are another story. The difference is that it is just as easy, if not easier to forge the paper ballots and stuff the ballot box that way.

The only thing this serves is as a reminder to the registrar offices to follow the guidelines... or as a scare tactic.

i wouldn't fret, 80% of the republicans out there think "memory card" is the note their adult children posted on their bathroom mirror, reminding them to wipe themselves.

On the issue of printouts: The units in my county print out exactly what you selected and require you to verify each section of the printout before you vote is considered "cast"

This serves as a full paper record that one could go back and "hand count" -- without having to worry about chads or mis-marks either, as it is blatently clear who was voted for.

Also, I have not hear anyone talk about the other good points about the touch screens -- 1. that you can store multiple language versions without having to print multiple ballots and 2. they include a voice mode for the visually impared so that, for the first time, the blind can cast a truly confidential ballot.

Just as long as they don't force voters to show picture ID, I am fine with switching back to paper voting. After all, hanging and dimpled chads will never cause the sort of problem that this machines inevitably will.

There is a few problems with the scenario that the demo does not point out:
a) detailed software specs are going to be needed to write the software to steal votes. An expert can reverse engineer the code, but this is something even 95% of professional programmers lack the technical skills to do.

b) In order to complete the vote stealing software then the perpetrators would need the configuration data for the current election, which in most cases is not available until 30-90 days before the election.

C) it is likely every different ballot configuration would need a new version of the vote stealing software, meaning a different version for each city council district, legislative district, school board combination. Making thousands of versions of the software necesary to steal a statewide election.

These problems are not insurmountable but, the do constitute a huge barrier to any large scale vote stealing.

I'd also like to point out that it was Democrats that were leading the charge toward voting machines a few years ago not the GOP. Take for example California when Gray Davis was Governor and Ken Shelley was Secretary of State, mandating hundreds of millions for electronic voting machines and setting unrealistic deadlines for implementation. But accountability has never been the Dems strong suit. That said I don't think there is much argument now on the left or the right that electronic voting machines are an expensive mistake. Paper ballots with optical scanners are the optimal combination of technology and reliability.

Didn't I read that this Princeton report deals with an old Diebold machine, and that Diebold debunked the report by saying that several security measures have been taken to prevent the happenings that Princeton reported?

and here i thought this was a gadget site ... it is truely interesting to see all the lib-dems bashing the conserv-republicans, but none sending raw comments the other way ... truely a testiment to approach of both sides.

no matter your view, there is never a need for you to lower yourself to petty slurs and mud slinging ... that helps neither side

as for the report, i agree w/ whats his face about 6 posts back use a touch screen and give individual recipts so they can check the results ... you could have a combination of humans and machines to check it (both would be good for some semblance of accuracy, i neither trust machines or the humans who run them entirely, because either could be tainted

I'm a conservative, and I don't harbor conspiracy fantasies about these machines. But the ease with which the machine can be opened really strikes me as irresponsible and stupid. I would want any such voting machine to require a code to be keyed in in order to set up the machine, and another code, not to be given to election workers until after the election, to re-open it. The codes should differ in each precinct. As matters stand, any voter of any party hidden behind a curtain with a key will have the time to open the machine and mess with it. THAT's really a dumb system.

Just because a memory card is numbered, doesn't mean that you can't quickly subsitute another for it, have it load the virus, the swap them back, or corrupt the contents of the numbered card. I saw another hack where the cover of the machine could be removed (!), allowing access to remove the cover over the memory slot, then put back together again. (Yes, it was held together with 4 externally accessible screws).

As for cameras and storage, I suspect there may be in some places, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up just being delivered to some guy's house the night before the election for him to set up in some remote polling booth in the sticks. Or delivered as a bunch to some guy's door ahead of time. No, these machines will be treated like the collection boxes used for other votes - except that it won't be visible if the count's been corrupted (i.e., when setting up, you can check each machine and each ballot box to ensure they're empty trivially...). Only the "filled" boxes with votes are securely handled.

The only real way is with paper verification. That way, the machine still counts, but there's a record of a vote so a recount can be done fairly easily by scanning or hand counting. (What, you think the voter keeps the paper receipt? That's extremely dangerous to the secret ballot system... no, the receipt gets deposited into your standard ballot box).

You would need an army of crinimals numbering in the tens of thousands, with a lab and state-of-the-art equipment the size of Lucent, strategically located acros the U.S., knowing the candidate months in advance? Not hardly! This video is just another example why some believe that polling stations should look like airport terminals. But when Democrats lose elections they now have a technical reason for an excuse.

Isn't a verified paper receipt just as easily hacked as a computer system? In the event of a recall, wouldn't unscrupulous types just forge some paper receipts?

I went to diebold and they offered me a job running machines for elections. They didnt know me from adam. They basically hire their friends in life to run the machines for them in the elections.

This company has a long history of bad security. You should google diebold, voting, and COTS.

To me, the best idea for voting machines is to have them running several different, independent programs simultaneously. Check the tallies against each other.

'course you need a new design to do that.

While the voting machine is easily corrupted by corrupt people, an equally important urgency concerns inadequate audit and supervision of the way in which vote totals from individual machines are aggregated within the polling places, then transmitted to County workers and "volunteers" and thence transmitted to State Departments of Elections. So easy to make an "error" here, e.g., of the magnitude of a power of 10, as we've seen before.

After the last election, Diebold explained to the committee investigating the charges of fraud that the records were the private property of the company. That seems fair. After all, if you've paid for the votes they are yours, aren't they?

Comrade Peter

you're all a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists. Go back to New York and keep protesting the government bombing of the twin towers. Kooks.

The problem with Florida is the immigrants [from oppressive dictatorships like New Jersey] don't know how to vote. And they wouldn't remember who they voted for long enough to verify a printed record if they got one.

How long after a touch-screen voting machine was put in would it be before the losing party would claim that their voters INTENDED to vote one way but didn't press the screen hard enough to record a vote. Technology won't overcome stupidity. (And what does it say about a party when their claim to "election fraud" is based on "our voters are too stupid to be able to press a lever"?)

No matter what method is used, the politicians will be able to buy someone (programmer, vote-counter, recorder, or whatever) who can throw an election. Elections require honest people to keep them honest; as long as politicians can find dishonest people, they can rig elections.

Who ever heard of a secure Windows OS..er..I mean, who ever heard of a secure Diebold ACCUvote?

...this shouldn't even be a debatable topic. Any question of electronic voting machines, involving a company which publicly states its political preference for a National election, keeps the software running on its machines as proprietary..blah blah

http://www.oregonvrc.org/2006/08/court_told_votes_dont_hav...

Dennis Hastert, a big loser, and a republican by chance, swore in a candidate before the vote count was completed. How is that possible?

http://mindprod.com/politics/election.html

I'm sorry, but you can call this "vote fraud conspiracies" and laugh at the stuff that's going on, but it's been happening since day one. Dead people voting..ya know?

If a country has people in power who allowed testing radiation on US citizens, and military..along with some nut dreaming up plans of state-sponsored terrorist attacks down in Florida and blame them on Cubans, to go to war with Fidel..."Operation Northwoods" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoodswell, you tell me what's possible and what isn't.

If you think our government is completely benign, you're a bigger joke than conspiracy nuts.

Krishnamurti said: If you want the right answer you have to start with the right question. So who proposed this "no record type of vote and why". The Republicans? or....
I am 100%sure that any knowledgeable techie or electronic engineer could install wireless circuitry at the source where the machines are made...say an extra chip that could silently alter the outcome of the vote. who would know?
The real problem is why has the question of a hard copy record been so easily dismissed! This seems to me to be the 1000 pound gorilla

I am 26 year veteran IT - programmer- sys designer. I knew from the start there is no secure way of creating a self contained digital voting computer. The only way a digital voting system can be employed is if it is designed as client server type of application with pgp style encryption to ensure votes transmitted are counted correctly and securely and then they need to be counted by several counting applications. When the voter enters the booth and sticks in his or her card, a pgp key is created and the vote can get securely cast. So in a sense you are literally broadcasting each vote where its gets counted by several systems which allows a method for error checking. In this scenario an election can also be monitored as it progresses eliminating the need for counting at the end. Again as always , you should always have a receipt of your vote (on paper) , for the voter and for the polling location.

I would think Washington has all ready figured out the software/hardware configuations enabling them to steal the votes and place whomever they want into office. We all know Al Gore won the election but ole George's cousin on Fox made sure the world heard that Bush won. Oh yeah, let's not forget about Jeb in Florida. Just like Arnold winning the Calif Gov......yeah right.....black out of the grid in Canada caused the ELECTRONIC voting machine in Calif to loose power and when it came up Arnold won after being behind about 35% of the votes.

They (The Illuminati's all ready know who is going to win the 2008 election)

I agree with the following:
pietrohome says:

I am 26 year veteran IT - programmer- sys designer. I knew from the start there is no secure way of creating a self contained digital voting computer. The only way a digital voting system can be employed is if it is designed as client server type of application with pgp style encryption to ensure votes transmitted are counted correctly and securely and then they need to be counted by several counting applications. When the voter enters the booth and sticks in his or her card, a pgp key is created and the vote can get securely cast. So in a sense you are literally broadcasting each vote where its gets counted by several systems which allows a method for error checking. In this scenario an election can also be monitored as it progresses eliminating the need for counting at the end. Again as always , you should always have a receipt of your vote (on paper) , for the voter and for the polling location.

10/17/06 03:28 PM

People from Princeton are stupid morons. You can't hack these things. Go ahead and try, and when you get caught call your parents for bail money so you can go back home and live in their basement.