[ale] OT: Voting machines cracked in California

[aaron]

On Wednesday 01 August 2007 18:32, Ned Williams wrote:
> If you read one of the many article news.google referred on this, you will
> note some very valid comments...
> 
> paper fraud is more common than electric as it stands and has stood for
> years..ballot stuffing....been around for awhile.
> Ned

Dear Ned:

You are obviously a conspiracy nut whose observations can be dismissed
as rantings from the lunatic fringe, since defrauding an election that relies
on voter verified paper evidence inevitably requires a conspiracy. The
larger the election, the more massive the number of conspirators needed
to corrupt the election outcome. Please do yourself a favor and remove
the tin foil hat while we consider the reality of the issue...

It is no revelation that incompetent processes for the handling of paper
ballots have, in the past, been exploited by election fraud criminals.
Of equal concerns in modern elections is the added opportunity for
electronic vote fraud wherever paper ballot tabulation machines are
used without sufficient manual auditing of the evidence [see Florida,
2000, Ohio, 2004, *"Hursti Hack" of Diebold, Fla., 2005 ] ]. We only
know about these frauds and election theft attempts because, in every
case, we have had the physical, human readable records and paper
ballot evidence to prove that fraud or errors occurred.  When the paper
evidence is properly utilized, election errors and fraud can be corrected.
*<http://votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1015&Itemid=113>

The fact that paper ballot systems can uncover and correct fraud even
when their handling or tabulation systems are incompetently implemented
is perhaps the purest demonstration that voter verified, human readable
and manually audited paper evidence should be an irrevocable
requirement for any legitimate public election process.  Acknowledging
that poorly implemented paper balloting systems can be abused does
nothing to challenge the fact that even a flawed paper ballot system is 
infinitely superior to zero evidence, proprietary electronic election systems 
that (by intentionally disfunctional design) do not provide any physical
public evidence by which fraud can be detected [see entire State of
Georgia 2002, 2004, 2006].

With election processes that provide voter verified paper ballots and a
secure, public chain of custody for that evidence - where the ballot boxes
and ballot counting remain at the public polling location in full public view 
until all the votes are tallied and audited - instances of attempted vote 
fraud are very rare, are localized to the precinct level, and are essentially
guaranteed to fail because of their reliance on a broader conspiracy.

(Conspiracy theories of voter identity theft and individual voter registration
fraud are subject to failure by similar constraints.)

Any honest and competent computer professional will confess that it is
impossible to detect or prevent all the possible security hacks or software 
failures for any given computer system, even under the best case scenario
of full public access to the source code.  When the voting systems and
software are locked behind proprietary secrecy or otherwise kept hidden
from public scrutiny, electronic vote fraud becomes effectively undetectable.
Combined with centralized vulnerabilities of computer voting systems, this
means that a single bribed programmer or corrupt corporate official or adept 
hacker in a spider hole can successfully defraud an entire national election, 
no conspiracy needed.

peace
aaron


> On 8/1/07, Bob Toxen <transam at verysecurelinux.com> wrote:
> >
> > URL:
> >
> >
> > 
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/28/MNGP6R8TJO1.DTL
> >
> > This story starts...
> >
> > State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through
> > the security of virtually every model of California's voting machines
> > and change results or take control of some of the systems' electronic
> > functions, according to a University of California study released Friday.
> >
> > This completely undermines our right to vote (and the implied right
> > to have our vote counted).
> >
> > While the article claims that an [ordinary] thief would not have access
> > to the machines' manuals, etc. "[because they are secret]".  That argument
> > is nonsense.  Given the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars spent
> > on National elections, bribing someone is trivial.
> >
> > Voter-verified paper audits are the only way to go.
> >
> > My $.02.
> >
> > Bob Toxen
> > bob at verysecurelinux.com               [Please use for email to me]
> > http://www.verysecurelinux.com        [Network&Linux/Unix security
> > consulting]
> > http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com [My book:"Real World Linux Security
> > 2/e"]
> > Quality Linux & UNIX security and SysAdmin & software consulting since
> > 1990.
> > Quality spam and virus filters.
> >
> > "Microsoft: Unsafe at any clock speed!"
> >    -- Bob Toxen 10/03/2002
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