how to steal an election, or The Diebold Bombshell

aug 3rd, 2006

i have never felt comfortable with the idea of electronic voting machines which do not leave an audit trail. i simply dont trust computers. or, as reagan used to say, i believe in the maxim, 'trust but verify'.

an indian marxist in the us had prepared to file a suit in the indian supreme court after the 2004 elections alleging voting-machine fraud -- i seem to remember a name like satinath something, although i may be mistaken.

however, as soon as he realized 'his' party was the apparent winner, his suit vanished without trace. i thought it was curious at the time.

it may well be that indians are indians are better at stealing elections than yanks are. all that fuss about 'hanging chads' and whatnot notwithstanding. at least there were physical ballots one could recount, in the florida case. with the EVM, there is absolutely nothing, and software is easily broken into. just ask microsoft's patch team: i counted 15 recent patches that microsoft is trying to push to my XP system, each of which says it fixes a security hole.

btw, not that i endorse this opednews site and its anti-us and anti-war idiocies, just that reader j forwarded this particular article to me.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: J


The Diebold Bombshell

By David Dill, Doug Jones and Barbara Simons
http://www.opednews.com
July 23, 2006 at 12:58:03

Most computer scientists have long viewed Diebold as
the poster child for all that is wrong with touch
screen voting machines. But we never imagined that
Diebold would be as irresponsible and incompetent as
they have turned out to be.

Recently, computer security expert Harri Hursti
revealed serious security vulnerabilities in Diebold's
software. According to Michael Shamos, a computer
scientist and voting system examiner in Pennsylvania,
"It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in
a voting system."

Even more shockingly, we learned recently that Diebold
and the State of Maryland had been aware of these
vulnerabilities for at least two years. They were
documented in analysis, commissioned by Maryland and
conducted by RABA Technologies, published in January
2004. For over two years, Diebold has chosen not to
fix the security holes, and Maryland has chosen not to
alert other states or national officials about these
problems.

Basically, Diebold included a "back door" in its
software, allowing anyone to change or modify the
software. There are no technical safeguards in place
to ensure that only authorized people can make
changes.

A malicious individual with access to a voting machine
could rig the software without being detected. Worse
yet, if the attacker rigged the machine used to
compute the totals for some precinct, he or she could
alter the results of that precinct. The only fix the
RABA authors suggested was to warn people that
manipulating an election is against the law.

Typically, modern voting machines are delivered
several days before an election and stored in people's
homes or in insecure polling stations. A wide variety
of poll workers, shippers, technicians, and others who
have access to these voting machines could rig the
software. Such software alterations could be difficult
to impossible to detect.

... deleted