Dare accepted on electronic voting machines - Programmer says she can crack system

Atlanta Journal and Constitution ^ | Aug 23, 2003 | Jim Galloway

[Kozak]

Jekot is not a political independent. She's a flaming liberal Dem and a popular poster on DU.

If she's a DU monkey I wouldn't bet she could program a VCR.

[Dr Warmoose]

They need to offer a $100,000 reward contest. Reward divided by all who are able to crack the system in 24 hours.

Way too low a reward. It needs to be in the tens of millions. Let's say that instead of the unemployed hacker living in his mother's basement, it is you that figured it all out and could form any outome you wanted through creative hacking. This machine is used in primaries and in the general election. As a corrupt demoncat would you reveal the backdoor for a measly $100,000 when you could auction off any election for millions? How about if you were a patriot who felt the ends justified the means and you made it impossible for a demoncat or leftist to win and instead a bunch or Ron Paul like characters could be elected? Would you throw away that power for $100,000? If you were able to decide elections, at what price would you put on that ability?

As for me, the bidding starts in the billions.

[Abogado]

I had heard that there was a little computer incident in Arizona awhile back. Apparently, the vote counting computer was connected to the vote reporting system by dial up modem... however, the modem connection was routed through the secertary of state's office before it went to the reporting system... I don't know if this is rumor or fact. Perhaps somebody with knowledege can post the story.

[Publius6961]

Brit Williams, a retired Kennesaw State University professor who helped design the state's touch-screen security system. He put the odds of corrupting the software undetected at 1 billion to one.

These academics, legends in their own minds, seem to be a dime a dozen.

D'OH!

Anyone seeking to compromise electronic voting would not announce it ahead of time!

I guess this "perfessor" sort of skipped math and statistics? Inquiring minds...

[Publius6961]

We'll soon see if her contention is true.

Of course it's true.
Serious professional programmers are unanimous about it.

Without thought out backup measures it's a piece of cake.

[codercpc]

I know Jim Robinson doesn't like us to link, or refer, to the "Darkside" DU, but your point is too important to let fly by.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=79458

I have been loosely following threads over there by "BevHarris" on the evil Diebold machines. She has been trying to prove that the machines are all programmed to give Republicans the win. She is so sure that the entire Republican Party in the US is stealing elections via voting machines. She also claims over and over again that all the voting machines are owned by evil "Bush backers", hence Bush will steal every election for Republicans in the future. They claim that these machines are the reason the Republicans won the 2002 elections.

I personally cant believe that one of their backers, in this case Roxanne Jekot, AKA DemActivist, (see above link) will do anything positive for the future of fair elections.

Don't misunderstand me, I am not 100% behind electronic voting, but I think in this case the ulterior motive is not fair elections, but will somehow come out as a smear against Republican winners.

Maybe somebody that has some info on the Georgia Secretary of States office could dig up more of these threads and forward them before the "test", so they know this so-called "independent", is really a DemActivist looking to smear the Republican Party.

[randog]

...no system without a paper trail is verifiable and trustworthy.

Correct. It's well known in the scientific world that the more complex a system is the more likely it is to malfunction, and any good system designer will include a low-tech backup in a mission-critical system. Evidently, everyone at Diebold knows that voting machines (computers) would never crash.

[Free Vulcan]

Take the ball and run. It is a worthy project. See if any other Freepers with the time could help.

[gitmo]

Oh how I love the smoke and mirrors here. Get the neo-luddites out to worry and fret over trivial matters of 1 billion to 1 odds, and completely ignore the fact that the dead, the corrupt, the illegal and the felon regularly vote multiple times in any given election.

It's not a matter of odds, it's a matter of the intelligence of the hacker. (Unless the hacker simply tries random access methods.) I once cracked an "uncrackable" system in one evening, just as a lark.

I know a coder who figured out the RACF encryption system in one evening, simply because management said it couldn't be done. He developed a screen that would display anyone's password by reading RACF and had the display on managements' workstations when they came into work the next morning.

[NEPA]

Roxanne Jekot might just be able to prove her claim about the vulnerability of the Diebold machines.

The conclusion some will come to is that there is a republican conspiracy to steal elections (Diebold is a corporation, corporations are in the pocket of republicans, yada yada yada).

What jumped out at me from the article is her claim to be a political independent. Maybe she has a reason to hide her political activism (her nick after all is DemActivist). I suppose she just wants to present herself as independent because it would appear to give her greater credibility. The AJC should probably be put wise to her although I doubt if they really care.

The DU is up to speed on electronic voting and some of their threads on it are actually pretty good. Their conclusions are totally wacky though. Why does it never occur to these people that most of the vote fraud occurs in Dem controlled cities and therefore can't realistically be perpetrated by republicans?

[Reeses]

Look for early morning power outages in Republican areas. The unionized power company workers would take all day to get the power restored.

[taxcontrol]

I'm very much aware of how to secure a system, it's what I do for a living. The purpose of a contest is NOT to secure the system. The purpose of such a contest is to build faith in the public for such a system.

[taxcontrol]

I'm starting from the assumption that there are tons of holes in the existing design. Small reward helps find the little stuff. Once the little stuff is taken care of, then boost the prize money to start encouraging the really creative hacks.

[exDemMom]

But there remains a bill in Congress, introduced by U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), to require that all voting machines produce a paper ballot that would be used as a back-up system in all elections. In any dispute, paper ballots would become the final arbiter.

Hmm, this is an absolutely sensible idea, and from a demonRAT, no less. Must be the common sense normally associated with the name "Rush" is rubbing off on him.

I would, however, take the idea a step further and insist that the paper ballots be tabulated every election, and not just in the case of a dispute. I don't trust a completely electronic system; how can anyone possibly know when a bit has been surreptitiously changed from "0" to "1"? Little electronic eraser marks? I don't think so!

[exDemMom]

Someone will break the system, and Georgia or some other state is gonna wake up the morning after election to find that some unemployed hacker living in his mother's basement has been elected Governor. Maybe then they will understand that no system without a paper trail is verifiable and trustworthy.

Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.

I think a big danger is the inside job, where the dims win every single race in a landslide, and the election officials claim (with a straight face) that the election was perfectly valid.

[exDemMom]

Liberals are absolutely convinced electronic voting is a republican conspiracy to steal elections.

Liberals are very good at projection--everything they are guilty of or contemplating doing, they accuse conservatives of doing.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I would, however, take the idea a step further and insist that the paper ballots be tabulated every election, and not just in the case of a dispute.

. . . reserving the electronic system for getting quick, erroneous answers that nobody pays any attention to . . .

[John Jorsett]

Hmm, this is an absolutely sensible idea, and from a demonRAT, no less. Must be the common sense normally associated with the name "Rush" is rubbing off on him.

As long as there isn't a corresponding 'receipt' given to the voter. I shudder to think what vote fraud would ensue if people could prove that they'd voted for so-and-so. It really would be possible to "buy an election."

[reformed_democrat]

Try to have the voter rolls in your state purged of dead and/or non-resident former citizens of the state. Just try.

You, sir, are absolutely correct.

If I'm not mistaken, its against federal law to remove a person's name from the vote roll without a letter requesting such from the voter himself.

Yes, I do have one typed, signed, addressed and stamped -- ready to go in case of my untimely demise.

Although I can't quite figure out how to remind my husband to mail it . . .

[reformed_democrat]

She has been trying to prove that the machines are all programmed to give Republicans the win. She is so sure that the entire Republican Party in the US is stealing elections via voting machines. She also claims over and over again that all the voting machines are owned by evil "Bush backers", hence Bush will steal every election for Republicans in the future. They claim that these machines are the reason the Republicans won the 2002 elections.

In the 2000 cycle, the dems thought they had it whipped. They even fed Zogby numbers so that at least one pollster wasn't reporting "Bush up by 10."

They thought ahead far enough to insulate themselves against a loss of the popular vote (they knew Bush had it, they knew by how much, and they knew how to steal it). If you check the propaganda from around August to October 2000, you'll see the dems hailing the electoral college as the final arbiter of all things presidential.

Fortunately for us, they got it exactly backward. Gore won the "popular" vote, but Bush won the electoral college.

This little charade with the programmer is just another fine example of dem strategy. This will plant the idea that all voting machines are corruptible, so that, in case of a Republican victory, the dems can sue, howl, and threaten riots.

The dems know they're dead. Now it's just a matter of convincing them to lay down.