Stealing an Election: Complete Instructions Included

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist–at least, not according to the computer scientists from Princeton I talked to today.  They’ve created a little stir by getting their hands on an electronic voting machine, and infecting it with a computer virus they’d written. 

What did the virus do?  Make the machine crash?  (It is, after all, a computer.)  No, not at all.  It quietly stole votes from one candidate (George Washington, in their demonstration) and gave them to another (Benedict Arnold).  Then it deleted itself to cover its tracks.

You can read our piece on the whole mess HERE. 

The Princeton computer team has posted its material HERE.

And, needless to say, you can hear the smoke coming out of people’s ears at Diebold Election Systems.  You can read their entire response HERE. 

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My Very Educated Mother….

One catch-up note: the planet–er, make that "dwarf planet"–formerly known as 2003 UB 313 and nicknamed "Xena" finally has an official name.

So start practicing: Eris…Eris.  It’s pronounced "EE-ris."  Mike Brown of Caltech, having found it, got to pick the name. 

After the whole scene last month over whether it and Pluto ought to qualify as planets, the name seems fitting: Eris was the Greek goddess of strife and discord.