Yes, she's strange and different...but not THAT different.

13 September 2006

How are you going to vote?

How ARE you going to vote? Whether you vote for a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian or a Whig may not be nearly as important as the mechanism you use to cast your vote. In a study by the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy entitled Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine the main findings of the study were:
1. Malicious software running on a single voting machine can steal votes with little if any risk of detection. The malicious software can modify all of the records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machine, so that even careful forensic examination of these records will find nothing amiss. We have constructed demonstration software that carries out this vote-stealing attack.

2. Anyone who has physical access to a voting machine, or to a memory card that will later be inserted into a machine, can install said malicious software using a simple method that takes as little as one minute. In practice, poll workers and others often have unsupervised access to the machines.

3. AccuVote-TS machines are susceptible to voting-machine viruses — computer viruses that can spread malicious software automatically and invisibly from machine to machine during normal pre- and post-election activity. We have constructed a demonstration virus that spreads in this way, installing our demonstration vote-stealing program on every machine it infects.

4. While some of these problems can be eliminated by improving Diebold's software, others cannot be remedied without replacing the machines' hardware. Changes to election procedures would also be required to ensure security.
An eye-opener worth reading ... even if you're not a geek.

  • On 9/13/2006 9:47 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    This is why I am afraid about what will happen in November. Kos likes to say thtat Republicans always find a way to close the deal come election day and I suspect their was some pretty fishy stuff going on in Ohio in 2004 and for sure yesterday in Marlyand.

    Here in Louisville, we use paper ballots that you fill in the circle for the candidate that you want and it is read by an optical scanner. You see your vote go in and the machine tally changes in front of you (total number of votes). There is then a paper record to back up the machine and they match up the tallies from the machines with the number of voters who signed in at the precinct. Seems to work pretty damn good.

    Of course there was a time here in Louisville when you only voted in the Primary as whoever won the Democratic primary won the election, but it is now a bit more even, though in the urban city limits it's still about 85% Democrat.

     
  • On 9/14/2006 9:30 AM, Blogger SoulPony said…

    Been hearing that from the last few elections. Our votes really don't count anymore.

     

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