Just . . .read the article. The complete lack of security is disgusting. At least back in the days of paper ballots, rigging an election against recount required considerable effort, and would likely make people think something was fishy, and would quite possibly be reversible (assuming lack of destruction of original ballots).
The many ways possible of electronically influencing/fooling with the election with Diebold's atrociously (or malevolently, if you swing that way) designed machines are subject to at most one of those "mitigating" considerations each.
And what's worse is the complete apathy by election officials.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I'm not sure if Georgia uses these machines or not. Of course, in my observation, if someone wants to tamper with votes, no matter what the machine, it will happen.
I was once a voter in a small town in AL and I had a poll worker do everything but try to cast my ballot for me. He was terrified that I was going to vote for a black candidate for mayor of that small town. I had to practically push him out of my booth--and that was a challenge considering that he was 6 ft and around 250 lbs. and I was 4'8" and maybe 100 lbs at the time.
Does your state use the machines in question?
Posts: 392 | Registered: Aug 2004
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The particular flaw highlighted in this article makes its possible to tamper with millions of votes at once, in seconds, in a manner that foils all the built in "audits" in the system.
Diebold is used some, but not extensively, in Indiana, I think.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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The Diebold thing scares me to death, but honestly, doesn't that site seem like an attempt at social engineering to get into countless voting systems?
It's phishing for votes.
Frankly, I think they need an internal printer that records each ballot, a write-once media that appends each vote as it happens, and two offsite dumps through discrete comm lines for every single voting machine, and audits to make sure they all match. And I'd still be suspicious.
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Blackboxvoting is the single largest site against electronic voting, at least in anything even vaguely similar to the systems available today.
Bev Harris (the person who runs it) is (as you can tell) of the mind that Diebold is out to deliver the election to the Republicans; it is both indisputable that the Diebold higher ups would like elections to go to the Republicans and that it would be easy for Diebold technicians to change the results in every single location Diebold machines are used. Whether or not these two things will become connected is another question, but that the second is true is insane.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I know nothing about them. I just know sentences such as "Black Box Voting will be happy to walk you through a diagnostic procedure over the phone" send shivers up my spine, if only because I've seen similar sentences result in idiots giving out credit card numbers.
One of the true costs of jerks breaking into systems is a lack of trust all around.
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