It’s been difficult to determine how much of the concern about electronic voting machine security is legitimate and how much of it is a left-wing conspiracy theory. But a report released this week by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice argues that the systems aren’t secure, and that one person with access and the technological skill can change an election. The report says that most of the vulnerabilities could be overcome by auditing printed voting records to spot irregularities — but most states don’t require that. Voting machine manufacturers dismissed the report as theoretical, but even some GOP lawmakers have become convinced that attempts to manipulate election results are inevitable. Said Thomas Davis, R-Va.: “It’s not a question of ‘if,’ it’s a question of ‘when.’ “
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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18 Comments
“Voting machine manufacturers dismissed the report as theoretical, but even some GOP lawmakers have become convinced that attempts to manipulate election results are inevitable.”
DOH! Someone wants to manipulate election results? This quote could have been made anytime in the last 200+ years!
If the Republicans win, they are not. If the Democrats win, they are.
Of course we have to forgive voting practicalities such as: Showing picture ID, being registar to vote, being in the right precinct, being alive, and voting just once on election day.
If Voting machine manufacturers are so stupid as not to know that results can be manipulated by hackers working for either party, then they’re certainly far too stupid to be given the responsibility for an accurate vote count.
A paper back-up system is an essential safeguard to protect the election results.
Obviously, they don’t want a paper back-up system so they can cheat and not be caught.
Prisons put doors on cells, which can be locked { that’s so the prisoners can’t escape }.
At least we’re not using those tricky chads here.
Yea, paper backup! That’s never been a source of cheating!
Hank
Come early and vote often!!!
Let me try this in the correct thread:
With 3 votes, you get moo goo gi pan, 4 votes you get egg roll.
I cast my 4 votes for egg roll!
Do you all hear the story where some folks in Texas were trying to have it adopted so that people with greater wealth would have more than one vote. I can’t remember where I read that one — will have to do some research.
should have been “Did you all…”
interesting link:
http://www.safevoting.org/
Scanable paper ballots are the way to go. Period.
The state of Maryland hired SAIC to do a study of the Diebold machines and evaluate them. After examining the machines SAIC submitted their report to Maryland and basically said there was no security built in them to prevent fraud. They also submitted what Diebold should do to fix the insecurities. After the flaws were ‘fixed’ Maryland was going to have SAIC reevaluate the systems. But just before they signed the contract suddenly a follow up by SAIC wasn’t necessary. Instead it was left to the group who validated the machines in the first place, with the 26 flaws. It is still unknown if the vulnerabilities have been corrected. It is very much unlikely that they have been fixed since one of the most severe problems was a lack of encryption. According to SAIC this type of problem would require Diebold to rewright the entire program from scratch. Something that would have taken much longer than the few months Diebold took to correct all of the problems.
k, no surprise there.
It won’t become an issue until the dem’s win.
Steve, they’ll have to be careful with that. The Reps, I mean. Wouldn’t want anyone looking into it too closely. ;)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10733572/the_2004_election
The 2004 ElectionKennedy report ignites controversy
Snow tried to deflect the question with a joke, suggesting that the reporter should serve as Bush’s “emissary from Rolling Stone.” But many citizens, journalists and elected officials are taking our four-month investigation of vote-rigging in Ohio far more seriously ["Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" RS 1002]. The debate began online, where the story set off a firestorm. More than 700,000 people logged on to rollingstone.com to read the story, and thousands of bloggers posted heated entries about Kennedy’s report.
The online furor caught the attention of some in the mainstream press, which has long downplayed the evidence of vote tampering. In The New York Times, Bob Herbert devoted an entire column to our investigation, concluding that John Kerry “almost certainly would have won Ohio” if Republicans had not blocked so many of his supporters from casting ballots. And The Seattle Post-Intelligencer blasted the media for its “deafening” silence on Kennedy’s report. “In terms of bad news judgment,” the paper observed, “this could turn out to be the 2006 equivalent of the infamous Downing Street memo” — evidence that the Bush administration falsified intelligence on WMDs to justify invading Iraq — “that was initially greeted by the U.S. media with a collective yawn.”
Even Democrats who have been slow to question the election results were convinced by Kennedy’s exhaustive report. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who serves as the party’s chief deputy whip, took the extraordinary step of admitting her mistake. “I apologize for not taking seriously enough the allegations that the 2004 election was stolen,” she confessed in a speech on June 14th. “After reading Bobby Kennedy’s article in Rolling Stone — ‘Was the 2004 Election Stolen?’ — I am convinced that the only answer is yes.” Schakowsky promised that the Democrats would move aggressively “to ward off a repeat performance.”
Kennedy, meanwhile, is preparing to up the ante on those he believes abetted the GOP’s electoral theft. In July, the outspoken attorney plans to file “whistle-blower” lawsuits against two leading manufacturers of electronic voting machines. According to Kennedy, company insiders are prepared to testify that the firms knowingly made false claims when they sold their voting systems to the government — misrepresenting the accuracy, reliability and security of machines that will be used by 72 million voters this November.
Good post Infernal. I’ll watch those suits Kennedy makes with great interest.
We all should.
There are a lot of problems with these voting machines. The paper ones also have problems.there is a whole media of reports from experts who have tested these machines at:
*ttp://*ww.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/show.cgi?1954/27675
Any system no matter how secure can be hacked. Parties who would hack these machines to change an election have the know how and resources to do so and get away with it–at least for awhile before the crime starts coming to the surface. The 2004 election is an example.