Audit Trails

Hacking Democracy on Google Video

UPDATE!
A major hat tip to Prometheus6.

Our own Michael is upset that I have published these because he feels they will scare people away from voting. I see the issue differently : Better to go armed with a heavy dose of skepticism and information than to go blinding trusting the current system to protect your right to vote.

What do you think?

This is not a reason not to vote. This is a reason for you, as a citizen, to protect your right to vote and be counted.

If you are going to have a Diebold machine, I honestly feel you should find out if you can go with a paper ballot. Why? Computer engineers not only have demonstrated how easy it is to hack Diebold Voting Machines; they also demonstrated how it's possible to do so without leaving a trace.

Here are the main findings of their experiment :

1. Malicious software running on a single voting machine can steal votes with little if any risk of detection. The malicious software can modify all of the records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machine, so that even careful forensic examination of these records will find nothing amiss. We have constructed demonstration software that carries out this vote-stealing attack.

2. Anyone who has physical access to a voting machine, or to a memory card that will later be inserted into a machine, can install said malicious software using a simple method that takes as little as one minute. In practice, poll workers and others often have unsupervised access to the machines.

3. AccuVote-TS machines are susceptible to voting-machine viruses — computer viruses that can spread malicious software automatically and invisibly from machine to machine during normal pre- and post-election activity. We have constructed a demonstration virus that spreads in this way, installing our demonstration vote-stealing program on every machine it infects.

4. While some of these problems can be eliminated by improving Diebold's software, others cannot be remedied without replacing the machines' hardware. Changes to election procedures would also be required to ensure security.

Obviate some (not all) of the tin-hat foolery interspersed by the people of Pluri Media Group (no relationship, by the way, with ePubluribus Media), and what you get is a solid Lou Dobbs special report on how to steal elections this coming Tuesday.

The kicker? "Unfortunately for democracy, there is no paper trail with the new electronic voting machines, so a recount is impossible".