Report: Electronic Voting Machines Still Very Vulnerable to Hack
EmailThousands of electronic voting machines to be used in upcoming primary elections are rife with vulnerabilities and could jeopardize the integrity of the vote, according to a new report by Black Box Voting, a consumer election group. ABC News first reported on the massive failures of Diebold touch screen voting machines on the eve of the 2004 presidential election when California election officials ordered thousands of the machines not to be used. Since then, the problems seem to have only gotten worse.
"This is the most severe problem I’ve ever seen," said Avi Rubin, professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University. Rubin said the Diebold machines are so vulnerable to hacking that someone could easily wipe out all the data at all the machines in one precinct. The technical flaws described in the report, according to Rubin, enable anyone with physical access to the machine to install a malicious software code. He says this could be done simply and with widely available tools.
The report was released in two versions. One for the public and one in a restricted confidential version so as not to give away the details to hackers.
A spokesman for Diebold told ABC News that the machines are very low risk. According to the spokesman, the function that is labeled as security threat by the report is there to allow election officials the ability to update the system. The company insists that touch screen technology is more accurate and that voters prefer it.
Click here to read the public version of the Black Box Voting Report.
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That electronic voting machines were ever approved for use baffles me. The ballots become data just hovering in virtual space with no hard copy evidence. It is easy to see how that data could be destroyed, manipulated, or logged incorrectly by any number of methods. Some things are too important to take on e-faith. The machines are ridiculously expensive also – obscene profit margins for the technology they use.
Posted by: dave o | May 12, 2006, 2:14 pm 2:14 pm
As the political parties polarize to the breaking point, voting with electronic machines will be challenged by the loosing team and create accusations to no end. Wee know there will be hacking and lost records of voting, as well as much re-voting to which either side will agree. Then what..??
Posted by: Frank | May 12, 2006, 5:26 pm 5:26 pm
Dave O,
It’s not that electronic voting machines are inherently bad. Machines made by Diebold, and others, lack a paper trail because they were -DESIGNED- that way.
There are other alternative electronic voting machines that produce hard copy paper trails, have strong auditing features, and are made as rock-solid embedded software systems.
Diebold, frankly, just basically threw a Windows based machine in a box, put a pretty interface on it, and calls it a “voting machine.” No wonder they constantly fail to pass muster. They are closed-source on top of it, so not even the government agencies in CHARGE of the vote can audit the code.
There are better, open-source, alternatives.
Check out http://www.openvotingconsortium.org for more info.
Posted by: Martin B | May 12, 2006, 7:11 pm 7:11 pm
It’s great to see the MSM finally coming around to the realities of the current electronic voting debacle. The websites below have continued to follow the numerous failures of these systems since the 2004 issues in California. Please visit them for in depth coverage the MASSIVE failures that have occured already during the recent primary elections. Besides being hackable, most of these machines do not produce a verifiable paper trail of votes. We are expected to rely on the fact that the internal computer will not crash. Right….if I crashed my car as often as my computer has crashed I’d be dead or in jail. Please act to stop this disgrace to our democratic process
“Either every vote is sacred, or democracy is a sham.”
- David Cobb, Green Party presidential candidate, 12/2/04
Please see
bradblog.com
VotersUnite.org
VoteTrustUSA.Org
Posted by: scott | May 12, 2006, 8:08 pm 8:08 pm
If this is the case, how do we know that hackers didn’t manipulate the votes in the prior elections?
God Bless
Posted by: Victoira Rum | May 13, 2006, 7:42 pm 7:42 pm