S.C. Sen. Phil Leventis wants voting machines impounded

[kpete]

S.C. Sen. Phil Leventis wants voting machines impounded
A state senator has asked that voting machines be impounded pending an investigation into a statewide Democratic primary where a political novice defeated a political veteran.

https://adw.thegreenvillenews.com/AdWebster/placead.jsp

Sen. Phil Leventis of Sumter asked the State Election Commission to impound voting machines until after an investigation is conducted. Chris Whitmire, a spokesman for the State Election Commission said no machines will be impounded.

Faulty cast-off electronic voting machines that South Carolina bought from Louisiana may account for what happened in Alvin Greene’s victory, Vic Rawl alleged in his protest.

Whitmire, a spokesman for the State Election Commission, said all of the state’s machines were purchased new from a Nebraska firm in 2004. He said it is possible a “handful” of machines might have been purchased as replacements by some counties since then.

more:
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20100615/NEWS/306150015/Senator-wants-voting-machines-impounded

[dgibby]

1. This should have been done on day one of this debacle. n/t

[ladjf]

2. This move, while well intended isn't likely to produce any evidence

of vote tampering. If there were fraudulent votes, the software that drove it will not be present
in the physical machine. If the machines are remote access capable,which they probably are, anything
could have happened via the access leaving no trace.

[no limit]

3. That's not really true.

If nobody touched the machines the software would still be loaded on there. But since this happened a week ago chances are somebody had access to them.

If this was done remotely traces would be left all over the place as I assume all traffic coming in and out of a voting machine would be logged (it would be absolutely insane not to log something that important).

[ladjf]

4. Software that is designed to commit fraud is usually programmed

to erase it's own code after the damage is done.

For example: Code says "alter vote results to favor candidate (A) 59% of the time." The code
says "At 6:52 (depending on the polling place close time) erase "fraudProgam.exe".

Illegitimate logins can be rigged to either bypass the legitimate ports or modify the login prior to exit.

Only the clumsiest of programmers would have installed fraudulent software and simply left it on the
voting machine.

[no limit]

5. Hard drives are kind of a bitch since the data is never really deleted

not to mention all the other traces something like that would leave. Yes, it would be difficult to find but not impossible. And when you are talking about rigging a national election I would think we have the resources to investigate something like that.

And again, any remote traffic would be logged I assume, if it isn't our country is fucked to the point where it can't be fixed.

[ladjf]

6. The most likely method is probably the remote login which could

have been built into the machine by the factory.

You are right about "deleted" programs not being deleted. However,there are ways around that also.
The code can be randomly merged into so other nonsense strings of characters,encrypted and then saved as a file, renamed someone inconspicuous and then deleted.

Further, the simplicity of the voter fraud problem would allow the entire code to be embedded in
all sorts of other files, i.e.logos, photographs and plain text.

Basically,the entire idea of trying to have valid elections using computers that are not guarded
at every step from manufacture, delivery, software is totally ludicrous. Those voting machines,if they must be used, need to be secured like the gold at Ft.Knox. Any less security than that is a bad joke. There are ways to make the process safe. No one in gvt/ is currently making any serious attempts to do that.

[no limit]

8. Remote login would be easily seen if they are tracking the traffic, which Im sure they are

any pocket that comes in and out would be logged.

Anything like this would leave traces somewhere that could be found given enough resources. I think this should be investigated and I think we need to stop using these machines. But I think what happened in SC could have been a voting machine glitch and not purposeful tampering. Since they won't launch a real investigation in to this and since there is no way to verify the results we might never actually know. And the fact that this is the case and we still use these machines is unbelievable.

[ladjf]

9. We agree on one thing, junk the damn machines. Count the votes

. What's the hurry?

[Wilms]

7. I would have wanted a look at the Ballot Definition Programming.

But that's just me.