Battle for voting machines

Personaly, I think this is the core problem:

“I wouldn’t be surprised, in light of the DNC, that major voting systems have been compromised,” said Ron Rivest, a founding father of modern encryption systems and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who won the Turing Award, computing’s version of the Nobel Prize.

Bev Harris, founder of the nonprofit election watchdog group Black Box Voting, said the computers that local election officials use to tabulate votes from multiple precincts are routinely connected to the Internet. “That computer is generally online, before, during and after the election,” Harris said. “If you can control the one machine that controls them all, that’s all you need.”

Duncan Buell, a professor of computer science at the University of South Carolina, worries about yet another threat: the deliberate corruption of voter registration data. “One easy way to disrupt an election would be to go into the voting lists and change a few thousand addresses,” Buell said. This would be especially disruptive in Washington state, Oregon, and Colorado, which conduct elections by mail.

After whistle-blower Edward Snowden revealed the astonishing scale of the National Security Agency’s spy operations, Russia’s intelligence service announced that it would go back to using unhackable typewriters to generate its most sensitive documents. Given the evidence that Russian hackers are tampering with our election, America should learn the same lesson, and stick with the safest voting technology ever devised: pen and paper.

www.bostonglobe.com...

I think that this issue deserves much more attention then people give it to. I think that this election is not going to be a battle of hearts and minds but batte for control over voting machines. Whoever wins that battle will win elections I'm afraid... And there are powerful advirseries on both sides...

a reply to: alomaha

Don't forget the issue that the software for the voting machines is proprietary. Unless the code is open source, how can you tell what is accurate. In Kentucky, the primary vote was close with Bernie ahead. As more precincts reported Hillary crept ahead in a statistically unsupportable fashion. This combined with discrepancies between exit poll data and tallies, points to massive voter fraud. More than just Hillary needs to be in prison.

a reply to: alomaha

Here in the UK they give us a pencil and paper. I always take and use my own pen though...

There's another parallel issue. The people who setup and run these machines. Top of the food chain, IME, is around $60K.

These guys are mostly involved in the physical distribution of equipment. They spend no time analyzing what the software is doing or the actual results that occurred during a specific election ... looking for flaws. If anything, they may run a diagnostic before an election kicks off.

Hacking an election would be easy-peasy. And, the fact that there's so much competition in the voting machine business causes my CT Red Flag to go right to the top of the mast.

a reply to: alomaha

I agree this issue should be addressed and brought to the fore as a huge problem.

However..........not going to happen. Americans have come to believe that if the MSM doesn't cover a problem, it doesn't exist. The MSM steadfastly refuses to cover this problem so..........it doesn't exist in the minds of the American public.

It will take a major scandal to bring it to the attention of the public because it would have to be a scandal so huge the MSM can't ignore it. Unfortunately, the MSM is owned, operated and controlled by people squarely in the Democrat camp and they won't cover this story and if there were to be a huge scandal, they'll try to sweep it under the rug.

Voting on machines in the big cities is probably useless.

a reply to: UMayBRite!

We'll likely see that same type vote fraud in the battleground states in the general election.

But it won't get covered by the MSM.

a reply to: Snarl

The problem is many people refuse to believe the elections could be rigged. I mentioned it to my co worker and he thought that it was clearly impossible. Another issue is even if it was outright rigged with proof at the end of the day there really is nothing the people can do. Every single year it becomes much more clear that we the people have no say.

a reply to: Prisoner60863

You nailed it. It's almost funny how people are not willing to consider anything outside their comfort zone. To even consider something like that could seriously undermine very foundation of ther trust in the system. They are affraid of it more than anything. If they cannot trust the government, who can they trust? It would be almost the same as if a pet would start doubting it's owner...

Isnt this as simple as having th election comission mandate they all be OFFLINE?

UPDATE: I directly contacted the FEC and notified them about the security hole.

Gerrymandering is by far the most effective way to rig an election.

If one is serious about elections, one would be advised to tackle that issue first.

Voter polls whether paper, electronic or computerized can all be corrupted in one way or the other.
However, because these methods are illegal, can be detected and can result in persecution, I highly doubt that tampering of this direct nature is that wide spread.
More likely is the disqualification of "provisional" ballots in terms of direct vote tampering.

On the other hand, Gerrymandering is legal for all intents and purposes and pretty much decides the outcomes of elections before they even happen.

A nice little intro to Gerrymandering

a reply to: Dreamwatcher

So whichever party controls particular state goverment can freely redraw those district lines, over and over again, to suit their needs? But in that case if one party would control vast majority of states, theoreticly it could choose president (as well as congressmen, senators etc.) from their own party forever practicly destroying oposing party?

Alabama Paper ballot
Alaska Paper and DRE with paper trail
Arizona Paper and DRE with paper trail
Arkansas Paper and DRE with and without paper trail
California Paper and DRE with paper trail
Colorado Mail
Connecticut Paper ballot
Delaware DRE without paper trail
Florida Paper and DRE without paper trail
Georgia DRE without paper trail
Hawaii Paper and DRE with paper trail
Idaho Paper and DRE with paper trail
Illinois Paper and DRE with paper trail
Indiana Paper and DRE without paper trail
Iowa Paper ballot
Kansas Paper and DRE with and without paper trail
Kentucky Paper and DRE without paper trail
Louisiana DRE without paper trail
Maine Paper ballot
Maryland Paper ballot
Massachusetts Paper ballot
Michigan Paper ballot
Minnesota Paper ballot
Mississippi Paper and DRE with and without paper trail
Missouri Paper and DRE with paper trail
Montana Paper ballot
Nebraska Paper ballot
Nevada DRE with paper trail
New Hampshire Paper ballot
New Jersey DRE without paper trail
New Mexico Paper ballot
New York Paper ballot
North Carolina Paper and DRE with paper trail
North Dakota Paper ballot
Ohio Paper and DRE with paper trail
Oklahoma Paper ballot
Oregon Mail
Pennsylvania Paper and DRE without paper trail
Rhode Island Paper ballot
South Carolina DRE without paper trail
South Dakota Paper ballot
Tennessee Paper and DRE without paper trail
Texas Paper and DRE without paper trail
Utah Paper and DRE with paper trail
Vermont Paper ballot
Virginia Paper and DRE without paper trail
Washington Mail
Washington D.C. Paper and DRE with paper trail
West Virginia Paper and DRE with paper trail
Wisconsin Paper and DRE with paper trail
Wyoming Paper and DRE with paper trail

Voting equipment by state

A big problem is a lot of these machines are approaching, if not exceeding, 10 years old.

These machines have been compromised long since.

Just posted:



Some interesting comments also...

a reply to: alomaha

Our voting systems have been hijacked since the election reforms that took place after the 2000 & 2004 elections.

They are actually less secure since then.

Case in point, the ODJFS database that was breached to smear Joe the Plumber, in 2008, on his child support payments. It also holds the voter registration information for all ODJFS clients. Clearly, it is not secure from prying eyes that might want to destroy political enemies.

Also, I am not sure I trust Bev Harris & Black Box Voting. Over the years, I've come to doubt her sincerity.

This is an issue I have spent much time researching though...S&Fs for you!

I saw "Democracy Hacked" and not because of this but I Knew voting Machines could be HACKED but this Documentary just reinforces it with Today's technology there's always a way to hack out many different systems so as far as voting is concerned I knew they would be hacking that as well it was only a matter of time and how many times have we had elections that were supposedly very close .As Far as I am concerned there is no trust when it comes to voting today it's just a big lie

Yet another article on the same subject @NPR:

The recent hacking of Democratic Party databases — and strong suspicions that the Russian government is involved — have led to new fears that America's voting systems are vulnerable to attack and that an outsider could try to disrupt the upcoming elections.

A cyberattack on U.S. elections isn't as far-fetched as you might think. Just a week and a half ago, Illinois election officials shut down that state's voter registration database after discovering it had been hacked. In June, Arizona took its voter registration system offline after the FBI warned it too might have been hacked, although no evidence of that was found.

Hacking An Election: Why It's Not As Far-Fetched As You Might Think

Trump, who previously suggested the Nov. 8 election would be rigged for Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, said he’d “heard some stories about certain parts of the state, and we have to be very careful.”

“Maybe you should go down and volunteer or do something,” Trump told the audience, bemoaning Pennsylvania’s lack of voter identification requirements.

“We have a lot of law enforcement people working that day,” he said. “We’re hiring a lot of people. We’re putting a lot of law enforcement — we’re going to watch Pennsylvania, go down to certain areas and watch and study, and make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times.”

touch.latimes.com.../-1/article/p2p-88097005/