Posted on 09/09/2017 5:29:26 AM PDT by Perseverando
The Virginia State Board of Elections voted Friday to discontinue use of all touch-screen voting machines throughout the state because of potential security vulnerabilities, forcing 22 cities and counties to scramble to find new equipment just weeks before voting begins for the November gubernatorial election.
Behind closed doors at an emergency meeting in Richmond on Friday afternoon, the board heard about specific vulnerabilities identified after a cybersecurity conference this summer in Las Vegas, where hackers showed they could break into voting machines with relative ease.
After the July Defcon conference, Virginia’s Department of Elections asked the state’s IT agency to review the security of touch screens still in use in the state. Details of that review were kept confidential, but they caused the elections board to speed up the end of touch screens, which were already scheduled to be phased out of Virginia elections by 2020.
Most Virginia localities — including the city of Richmond and Henrico, Chesterfield and Hanover counties — have already transitioned to optical-scan systems, in which voters fill out bubbles on a paper ballot that is fed into a scanner.
In a memo on touch-screen machines prepared for the board, the Department of Elections said the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, or VITA, found that “each device analyzed exhibited material risks to the integrity or availability of the election process.”
The password for a touch-screen machine used in Virginia was publicized after the July hacking conference, the memo said, and one report indicated that one vendor with machines in Virginia uses a single password for all machines. The memo also notes that, unlike optical systems, touch screens leave no paper trail that can be used in post-election audits.
Before last year’s presidential election, Virginia officials stressed that all touch-screen machines were secure because they aren’t connected to
(Excerpt) Read more at richmond.com ...
So maybe having voter ID cards that are swiped at the voting terminal and can be used only once and then the card is locked out? As in several “underdeveloped nations”? But in the US you can’t fly unless you have proper ID.
‘Scramble to find new voting machines’ - um, fingers and dye, pencils and paper, X marks the spot, drivers license: tried for generations and they seem to work.
Yes. BTW, I have a degree in Computer Science and I say there should ALWAYS be a paper trail to the votes, no computer-only voting.
Plus, voting machines and ballots should be considered nearly the same as nuclear codes.
This won’t do a thing for honest elections if a crooked governor such as McAlliffe decrees by executive order that all felons can vote, as he did so Hillary could win VA. He should have been sued by the VA GOP, but they are brain dead.
Ballots are now provided, by law, in languages other than English.
Imagine a business publishing a financial statement with no paper trail.
The business would say, trust us these are the numbers.
Just imagine.
Welcome to Nuevo America. Press 1 for English. I miss Grandpa’s America.
VA is solid blue with a Republican legislature?
VA is split between Northern VA and the rest of the state.
I’m not a programmer, but I can easily see how a re-write of code could throw elections. Example:
1) Sum up all “R” votes, multiply this value by 0.9
2) Round up to next whole number
3) Report this as total “R” votes
4) Sum up all “D” votes, multiply this by 1.111111
5) Round down to next whole number
6) Report this as total “D” votes
7) Self-Delete this code and revert back to original code
The last step is in case the machine is audited.
It’s nice to FINALLY see this wide-open gap in our voting system starting to be addressed - it was STUPID to ever buy these machines.
There should absolutely be a receipt for every vote to prove later.
Remind me of how a programmer fixed lottery games:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/30/mastermind-of-lottery-fraud-admits-he-rigged-jackpots.html
...Investigators say Tipton installed code that let the computers work as should on all but three days of the year — May 27, Nov. 22 and Dec. 29 — when they would produce predictable numbers if the drawings occurred on Wednesdays or Saturdays after 8 p.m...
Yea, that would be part of it too. Only have the hacked code execute on the evening of Election Day. That way all the pre and post testing would show up fine.
Now if they use optical scanners, it is always possible to later compare sample scanner readings with sample hand counts (which should always be done for a contested election), and if they differ, then hand-count everything (and jail the Leftist who hacked in). But the key is the paper...no one that I know of has figured out a way to change what is written on paper.
Check out who runs Federal HAVA-Help America Vote Act which we taxpayers fund. Local election boards and Secretaries of State LOVE that FREE money.
Ah, yes. Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the penultimate hypocrite. Highly offended and belligerent over the suggestion that there was voter fraud in Virginia in the Presidential election. Now that he’s facing re-election to the Governor’s mansion, the Elections Board is admitting their voting machines are vulnerable to hacking. Still no willingness to look into the numbers of illegal voters that cast votes in that State and will continue to cast fraudulent votes in this next election. They must be McAullife’s base.
Fortunately for us in VA, the Governor sits for only one term. He can't run for re-election. I think he has higher aspirations in 2020. There's a whole country to wreck, not just one state.
Bush and congress at the time are responsible for these machines being used. They used the 2000 election as an excuse to get rid of tried and true voting methods and replace them with things that are prone to rigging, hacking, and error. And they did it on purpose.
People who are trying to keep tabs on those groups and their activities need to be aware that La Raza recently changed their name to UnidosUS.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2017/07/11/national-council-la-raza-name-change-unidosus/459622001/
“VA is solid blue with a Republican legislature?”
Yes, for any statewide race it is solid blue.
The Republican legislature exists because of gerrymandering, but in typical Republican fashion, they are losing even that advantage as fraudulent voting spreads across the state and the democrats pick up new districts..
Several long-term Senate and House delegate districts have gone from red to blue, and stupid candidates this year are running on being able “to reach across the aisle” to work with democrats. They will lose.
Bravo for Virginia - at least the Gov. office has a term limit. McAuliffe is a jackass...says the gal who has to endure that moronic libtard, Jay Inslee.
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