Step by step guide to stealing an election

John stokes at Artstechnica has written a comprehensive guide to stealing an election using electronic voting machines. Hopefully, with this information out there, it won't happen again.

arstechnica.com...

Over the course of almost eight years of reporting for Ars Technica, I've followed the merging of the areas of election security and information security, a merging that was accelerated much too rapidly in the wake of the 2000 presidential election. In all this time, I've yet to find a good way to convey to the non-technical public how well and truly screwed up we presently are, six years after the Florida recount. So now it's time to hit the panic button: In this article, I'm going to show you how to steal an election.

I have this sneaking feeling that were about to see this happen again in a matter of weeks.I've noticed the Republicans(Bush included) have been overly confident about winning the mid term elections,even though most polls state otherwise.This confidence comes from somewhere,and it isnt from wishful thinking.

Guys,

Hacking Diebold is so difficult that you could never imagine.

First, you need a Windows based PC computer, and i mean, who has one of those?!?!

Then you need Microsoft Access to open the diebold Genesis program database files without leaving any trace. And considering that almost everybody has Microsoft Access on their computers, the government is entirely correct when they tell us that it is impossible and will never happen.

Then you need to use the backspace key and number pad to rearrange the votes, again without leaving any trace because you are using microsoft access to open the database files and it is not programmed to leave any trace. And i mean, that's so simple that its obviously ridiculous and impossible, just like the government tells us!!

Seriously, watch this very simple 15 minute demonstration of how to hack a Diebold machine and you will see that its impossible!

If you couldnt tell, im being sarcasting because this is so obviously way too easy to do that for christs sake how come nobody in the media has stopped it?!?!

I'm scared!!

I have written my own program to 'rig' an election. I want permission from admins first before I start linking a .exe file though. If an admin could throw me a U2U saying its ok then I will be happy to show you all how easy it is to rig an election. The code I used below is here if you want to look at just how many lines of computer code it takes to change history.

Dim fix As Single
If lblVoteCount2.Text >= lblVoteCount1.Text Then
fix = lblVoteCount2.Text - lblVoteCount1.Text
lblVoteCount1.Text += fix
lblVoteCount2.Text -= fix
End If

If lblVoteCount2.Text = lblVoteCount1.Text Then
lblVoteCount2.Text -= 1
End If

It's just going to be interesting to watch the fallout from this one. The Republicans have obviously got a) ruthless and b) extremely competent at stealing the elections: they took the last two without a word from the MSM.

The biggest drawback is the pre-election poll results that predict victory for the Dems, and the exit polls that support this. To justify the discrepancy the MSM has to come up with lamer and lamer excuses - I'm sure we'll be seeing a few on this thread pretty soon - like "Republicans don't like to talk about their votes". Sure. They're ashamed of voting Republican, but went ahead and did it anyway because they really think the US is better off in an illegal war (with more to follow) and with a budget deficit that their grandchildren will curse them for.

How long before those people who cry "fraud" are designated as terrorists trying to undermine the American system?

Indeed, exit polls have always been used to determine the validity of an election and also to declare the winner long before the actual voting results come in.

Exit polls are probably more accurate than the than actual physical counting (remember florida?).

The huge discrepancies in the past two presidential elections between exit polls and results confirm, beyond all reasonable doubt, that something very goofy was going on.

Not only were the numbers way off, but blacks and democrats were intentionally disadvantaged in a number of ways. High african american or democratic population densities in key swing states drew the largest number of inconsistencies; voting machines not working right, not enough voting machines, people being declared felons and ineligible to vote...

Greg Palast from the BBC also exposed how voting machines in black/democratic districts in Florida were rigged to accept incorrect ballots. Those ballots were very confusing. If you accidently vote for two people for the same office, the machine is supposed to spit it back out at you so you can get a redo with a new one. However, these machines gladly accepted the ballots which were then thrown out because they were disqualified. The entire ballot would be thrown out even if only one voting proposistion somewhere on the form was incorrectly punched...

Also....
Voting Machines whistle blower discusses Hacking prgrams that Jeb Bush ordered before 2000 election

well, sorry to rain on the parade, i know you guys want the republicans to rig elections so they can stay in power because you love them so much, but listen to the voice of reason.

while hacking it may be possible and not incredibly hard, one can only go but so far before it becomes obvious that it has been tampered with. you cant make a traditionally heavily democrat city vote republican when they've voted 70%+ democratic every election since the creation of the country. especially when the republicans arent looking good in the media at all, its pretty bad.

i heard one republican political thinker on a radio talk show say that the republican party is hoping to lose only 12-18 seats in the House and 4 from the Senate, although theres a possibility of them losing 30 seats in the House and 6 or more in the Senate. If they lose 15 seats in the House, they've lost majority of it.

i think the tides of change are too strong at the moment to be held back by trickery; the results arent even going to be close to each other in many places; its either gonna go heavily democrat or heavily republican in most states.

IMO, we will be seeing a Democratic House by the end of the year and a Democratic President by January 2009. The Senate I don't know enough about at the moment.

[edit on 10/27/2006 by runetang]

I think they can make a 'democrat' county go 'repub' with no problem. All they need to do is say that X% of the county is illegible to vote because of some trumped up reason (name sounds like that of a felon). Then, when asked why the exit polls said something different, they'll say it was because of all of the illegible voters.

Originally posted by runetang

while hacking it may be possible and not incredibly hard, one can only go but so far before it becomes obvious that it has been tampered with. you cant make a traditionally heavily democrat city vote republican when they've voted 70%+ democratic every election since the creation of the country. especially when the republicans arent looking good in the media at all, its pretty bad.

[edit on 10/27/2006 by runetang]

Actually, in a truly legitimate election, this sort of thing does happen! If this election in the fall were truly legitimate, you will see a landslide where lots of traditionally republican votes go towards the democrats. Most republicans polled or that i have personally talked to dont like bush at all!

The key to rigging an election usually comes down the swing states where its already a close race anyway. And seeing as how there are a number of polls showing most of these races are something like 49-51%, just a few votes makes a huge difference and will go pretty much unnoticed by the media.

And, they always have the excuse that, "The pre-election polls are innaccurate and dont reflect how people will actually vote on election day or what type of voter turnout you can get. Often times pre-election polls are skewed by people that dont intend to vote, and then the people that do show up to vote have totally different opinions..."

They have a lot of excuses and a lot of talking heads in the media to drown us in the propaganda.

If it werent possible to get around the PR nightmare of election rigging, then;

Why would they go to the trouble of making the machines so easy to hack?

Why are they so resistant to having actual security measures in place?

Why is Diebold so resistant to the most basic, rudimentary election controls?

All it takes is a print out, at least. Plus, you could easily have independent auditors inspect the source code to the machines, but Diebold has a lot of lobbying money to prevent that from happening.

Diebold has a number of conflicting interests that are clearly evident. Jeb Bush, for one...

If you vote on an electronic machine, you might as well throw your vote away. I still plan on voting though, and i encourage everybody else to vote too! If you dont vote then you have absolutely no legal basis to challenge them for throwing you votes away and rigging the election.

Voter apathy is responsible for all of the evils in the world!