[ale] OT: Electronic Voting in GA

[Irv Mullins]

On Saturday 19 October 2002 05:04 pm, Michael D. Hirsch wrote:
programmer to throw the election.
>
> And that programmer doesn't even have to work on or break into the
> voting software.  If the voting software is on a closed source
> operating system, what is to keep someone from doing some obfuscated
> hackage to the OS code.  Say some code that does something like "in a
> group of radio buttons, if one with the word 'Democrat' is selected,
> show it as selected but 5% of the time don't return it as the selected
> button when the button group is queried.  Return some other button in
> the group instead."
>
> How would a hack like that ever be found?  It's not in the code that the
> software supplier gives to the auditors (if any)--they don't even have
> access to this code.
>
> One big reason that any voting system needs to be open source from the
> ground up, not just the application but the OS and drivers, too.

Chief Justice: Mr. Gates, place your right hand on the bible.
"Do you solemnly swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States......"

Then the band plays Hail to the Thief and we all go home.

Irv


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