How to Hack an Election

[acmavm]

Published: January 31, 2004

<snip>

oncerned citizens have been warning that new electronic voting technology being rolled out nationwide can be used to steal elections. Now there is proof. When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails.

When Maryland decided to buy 16,000 AccuVote-TS voting machines, there was considerable opposition. Critics charged that the new touch-screen machines, which do not create a paper record of votes cast, were vulnerable to vote theft. The state commissioned a staged attack on the machines, in which computer-security experts would try to foil the safeguards and interfere with an election.

They were disturbingly successful. It was an "easy matter," they reported, to reprogram the access cards used by voters and vote multiple times. They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count. And by exploiting a software flaw and using a modem, they were able to change votes from a remote location.

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Did a search, didn't see this anywhere. If it's a dupe, please delete.

[Danocrat]

1. Come November, It'll be

May the best hacker win.

[Bandit]

3. I think this is one issue Freepers and Democrats can unite over

They don't trust us and we don't trust them so it is in both of our interests to be able to verify. Like ol Ray-gun said "Trust but Verify" I hope they still believe in the words of their mightiest warrior.

[Bushfire]

2. Link?

nt