Hacker hysteria

Wash Times ^ | 11 may 04 | John Lott

[white trash redneck]

Last month Democrats on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights claimed electronic voting machines meant "we're ending up in '04 with the very same problems and issues that were there before."

Yet, these horror stories have one major problem: None of the electronic voting machines is hooked up to the Internet. The machines are stand-alone units. It would be like someone trying to hack into your computer while it wasn't hooked up to the Internet. Impossible.

[white trash redneck]

While I think that Lott minimizes the potential for electronic voter fraud, he does bring up some good points.

First, he quotes HilLIARy as saying Sen. Hillary Clinton warns Democrats how "hacking" easily can "skew our elections" and points out that a Republican is the second-largest manufacturer of electronic voting machines.

May we therefore conclude that the largest manufacturer of electronic voting machines is a DemocRAT?

Second, as Lott points out The irony is that Democrats who complained the loudest about how punch-card machines and hanging chads in Florida disenfranchised voters are now complaining the loudest about what they earlier insisted was the "cure".

How true.

Finally, for the DemocRATs to be whining about voter fraud, while on the one hand being black belts in the dirty art themselves (cf Thune Johnson race 2002), and on the other hand opposing all reasonable attempts to purge the voter rolls of dead people and felons, is mind-boggling.

[longtermmemmory]

It is the multiple voter that is the largest fraud issue that can be EASILY corrected. Make it a federal law that anyone who goes to vote has to provide a phot ID issued from any official authority, DL (if not from CF)or Passport.

The fraude is from the fact that INSIDERS are able to tamper without leaving a trace. Memory cartridges can be wiped or substituted. It it also my understanding that some of these systems are connected over phone lines. The second that takes place they are vulnerable to hacking even if not connected to the internet.

[farmfriend]

Short list.

[ServesURight]

Excellent article. This article can be compared to people who go into hysterics over using their credit card over an encrypted Internet site but have no problems giving it to an actual person at a cash register.

[supercat]

In a good voting system, a voter who casts a vote should be able to see that the act of voting has made an indelible change in an unsubstitutable medium which cannot be further altered without such altenation being clearly fraudulent.

Such a system is technologically feasible using a variety of different methods. I see no good reason why the above criteria should not be required for all voting systems.

[MonroeDNA]

Electronic voting machines are the most difficult system to "change the results" after the fact, or otherwise tamper.

This scares the Democrats.

Remember the gang in Miami beating down the door, when dems were altering votes?


The only party with a history of voter fraud is the dems.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

The Rats will always find a way. Remember the story about that one lady who had an actual voting machine in the trunk of her car? What's to stop Rats from doing the same thing, endlessly punch in votes for Rat candidates and give the disc to a precinct overrun by Rat operatives?

[TheLion]

Remember the Democrats like to negate our votes....that is where they have overturned many elections. Paper is easier to double punch etc. You can bet they will never be for anything that cleans up the mess.

sweetliberty has done a tremendous service by providing an outlet where we can post vote fraud related material. We will be getting it back up and running soon for the fall elections. We welcome your input.

If you would like to be on our "ping" list, please let me know.

Freepers Agains Vote Fraud (Thread2)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/798132/posts

[B4Ranch]

Would you buy something without a receipt?

No, I don't think you would, so why allow your vote to be recorded without a receipt showing what Party and what individual you voted for?

The man in Georgia who designed the only electronic voting machine that automatically gave out receipts died last month or the month before in a car accident. Strange, or just the odds?

I don't know but I do have my suspicions. I'm just unsure as to where to lay the blame.

[supercat]

Remember the Democrats like to negate our votes....that is where they have overturned many elections. Paper is easier to double punch etc. You can bet they will never be for anything that cleans up the mess.

If ballot boxes were designed so that invalid ballots could not be inserted, punched-paper ballots would probably be about as secure as anything else. Actually, non-pre-perfect ballots (punched with a spring-loaded tool) would probably be slightly better than optical-scan paper ballots, though the improvement would not be terribly great.

The only reason easy fraud works with punched-card ballots is that one can 'justify' the appearance of spoiled ballots by blaming it on voter error. If the ballot box were designed to reject spoiled ballots, then spoiling the ballots after they were cast would raise a red flag.

[TheLion]

Here in Virginia we mark circles with a dark pin and then feed the paper into a machine. It can't be tampered with at the local level. If the machine also reads the votes, this would help. I think ours do.

[supercat]

No, I don't think you would, so why allow your vote to be recorded without a receipt showing what Party and what individual you voted for?

Because one of the requirements of a secret ballot is that unless the election result is unanimous it be impossible for anyone ever to prove for whom a particular voter voted; even the voter must be unable to provide proof of his vote.

Allowing the voter to prove how he voted makes it possible for others to entice or coerce the person to vote a particular way and ensure that their instructions are carried out. If even the voter can't prove how he voted, such coersion becomes harder.

[supercat]

Here in Virginia we mark circles with a dark pin and then feed the paper into a machine. It can't be tampered with at the local level. If the machine also reads the votes, this would help. I think ours do.

My biggest complaint about optical-scan systems is that they don't prevent a fraudster from adding votes to a ballot in races where the voter didn't select anybody. There are some ways that this could be remedied (e.g. allow a voter to mark a race "NO CANDIDATE SELECTED"), but I don't know of such remedies being used in practice anywhere. Unlike some "None of the above" balloting protocols (where a NOTA victory forces an election with a new slate of candidates), the "NO CANDIDATE SELECTED" choice would serve merely to ensure that nobody could later cast a vote in that race on that ballot.

[E.G.C.]

BTT!!!!!!