Princeton prof hacks e-vote machine

Associated Press via Yahoo News ^ | September 13, 2006 | Chris Newmarker

[ARealMothersSonForever]

Put the operating system into rom that requires 256 based encryption to reprogram.

Now how are we going to validate the disenfranchised voter that signed their name "X"? They have no book learnin', and need an assistant to do the readin' and cipherin'. I see it at the polls every single time. "Honey, I am not asking you to tell me who to vote for. Just tell me which one had that nice commercial with the puppies."

[MrEdd]

If they are not networked and physical access is limited, I don't understand what the hype is all about. I worry much more about physical ballot box stuffing and in-eligible voters.

That is why in Iraq, and other places where fraud prevention is an ACTUAL PRIORITY paper ballots with the voter's finger prints are used.

[muawiyah]

Of course you have to be someone with a doctorate in computer science to even begin the task, and that's a lot different standard than stuffing a Vota-matic machine in your car trunk.

And if you stick a wire coathanger in the computer running the system you might well be electrocuted.

[muawiyah]

10 seconds is a lot of time.

[muawiyah]

Paper ballots are subject to ballot stuffing and ballot substitution.

We already know how to defeat them, and it's very easy.

[Mariner]

Personally, I think electronic voting machines will be our eventual undoing.

Crooked people could alter the totals without a trace...or a trace so vague as to not be readily identifiable and CERTAINLY incapable of reconstructing the original totals.

Paper ballots, read and totaled by machine are the only way to go...hanging chad and all. It allows the contest to be reconstructed manually and allows for statistical sampling of paper ballots as a cross-check of machine totals that could be WAY out of whack.

[ThanhPhero]

I have never thought anything good of these things but find it galling to have to agree with my UF prof friend about anything. These things are dangerous to voting and are bad even if they are never compromised because it is impossible to convince everyone that they are safe and pure. There is no hardcopy evidence and tampering evidence is so ephemeral compared with tampering evidence when using punch cards or making marks on paper. No matter how earnest the assurances one can never be free of suspicions that these things can be hacked. When they were first described I thought of them as gifts to the big city political machines.

This puts me in mind of the gasoline price chicanery that happened around here a few years ago. Most of the pumps now are electronically controlled from a terminal in the store and a program circulated that allowed the prices to be altered progressively. The first 5 gallons was priced properly due to all the folks with 5 gallon outboard motor gas tanks who would be instantly aware when they put 6.5 gallons in their cans. Above 5 gallons the program can be set to deliver progressively smaller gallons. The beauty of it was that when the state guy drove up the clerk merely had to punch F12 or DEL and the pumps were instantly reset to be legal. I got so I bought no more than 5 gallons at a time or went to one of the few stations that still had mechanical readouts. That stuff went on for most of a year until the large number of people involved became its undoing as too many clerks and managers had too many beers and bragged. The perps were all stuck with $3000 fines which seems like it would be worth it. I am sure that the stations that participated made more than 3 grand on it.

[Ticonderoga34]

Libs are setting up the "election fraud by Diebold" talking point in case they don't take control of Congress in November.

Now if the Rats win in November, you won't hear a thing about "election fraud by Diebold".

[hosepipe]

Forget the voteing machines.. a large portion of more than 30 million legal and illegal aliens voting will change the voting demographics in America for ever... Well.... at least for a long time..

Clue: Aliens are much much more crafty than dead people voting.. Like dead people... aliens will never vote republican... Wonder if some college professor has studied this strange FACT.. A needed study.. Seems the RNC could care less about all this.. Another strange FACT..

[pleikumud]

The Democrats are replacing the Communists, who also spread deliberate lies trying to undermine free countries.

[RobRoy]

"Radke also question why Felten hadn't submitted his paper for peer review, as is commonly done before publishing scientific research. "

Hmmm. Must be one of those pesky creationists as well...

[samtheman]

sorry, coconutt2000, your idea makes too much sense

it will NEVER pass bureaucratic scrutiny


by the way, your tag-line is great:

(NO MORE PEACE FOR OIL!!! DOWN WITH TYRANTS, TERRORISTS, AND TIMIDCRATS!!!! (3-T's For World Peace))

[AustinBill]

Good system design. The other problem with these machines is that they need to be very cheap, because nobody wants to stand in line behind a single voting machine, and you can't afford a lot of security bells and whistles when each polling station needs 20-30 of them and has a limited budget. By contast, polling places with paper ballots have many stations (basically a chair and a privacy screen) where ballots are filled out, but one ballot box where they are stored. In your analogy, you'd have lots of cheap "electronic" card punchers and then one or two more expensive (and hence better built) electronic ballot boxes to count/store them.

[supercat]

Put the operating system into rom that requires 256 based encryption to reprogram.

I have a better idea. Put the operating system on a ROM chip which is visible through a window, bears serialized holographic seals from both parties, and is physically incapable of being altered except by replacement. Record votes on a write-once medium which is likewise visible, marked with serialized seals from both parties, and cannot be reused.

Any system which uses software on rewritable media, or which stores votes on rewritable media, is bad, period.

[pabianice]

Liberals. Can't win elections so they try to ban elections. Typical.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

The list of things I don't think should be done by private enterprise is is pretty short.

Writing proprietary software to count my vote is one of them - I want this done ONLY by open-source software that can examined for potential security problems by anyone who wishes to do so.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Is anybody scared that all over the country, we have electronic voting machines.

And all over the country, those machines are being given to left-wing professors and organizations?

And all over the country, those organizations and college leftists are learning how to hack the systems and change the vote totals, all in the name of "securing our votes?"

Does anybody else smell a rat here? Does it seem the leftists are preparing an all-out assault on voting machines to fraudulently steal elections?

[DocRock]

bookmark

[osideplanner]

I'm confused about this. A few years ago I worked the polls in Riverside Co. CA. The machines were not networked to any ourside lines or each other. Each machine had a disc and the discs were collected and entered into the central machine at the registrar's office. The collection of the discs into a locked box was witnessed by all the poll workers. Each lockbox was turned in by a certain time after the poll closed. Two people took the lockboxes from each polling place to the registrar's office. I don't know how they can be hacked.

Someone please explain the problem to me.

[SauronOfMordor]

Of course you have to be someone with a doctorate in computer science to even begin the task, and that's a lot different standard than stuffing a Vota-matic machine in your car trunk.

A CS PhD can be hired for a tiny fraction of what is currently spent to win an election