Hacking the voting machines

There's now proof of how easy it can be for someone to alter the results of an election by hacking into the electronic voting machines.

When Maryland decided to buy 16,000 AccuVote-TS voting machines, there was considerable opposition. Critics charged that the new touch-screen machines, which do not create a paper record of votes cast, were vulnerable to vote theft. The state commissioned a staged attack on the machines, in which computer-security experts would try to foil the safeguards and interfere with an election.

They were disturbingly successful. It was an "easy matter," they reported, to reprogram the access cards used by voters and vote multiple times. They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count. And by exploiting a software flaw and using a modem, they were able to change votes from a remote location.

Verified Voting.org, an advocacy organization working toward getting voter-verifiable paper receipts added to electronic voting machines - which would allow each voter confirm that their vote has been recorded accurately and creates a paper trail that can be used to recount votes if necessary - has listed several examples of miscounts and other questionable results at their website, along with a great deal of other information on problems with the way electronic voting systems currently work.

As I've said before, this is not something that should be considered a partisan issue. Republican votes can be stolen just as easily as Democratic votes, which can be stolen just as easily as votes for Independent or 3rd party candidates. Everyone is at risk from this. The hell we went through following the Florida debacle is minor compared to the hell these machines - as they are currently used - can cause. In Florida, we at least had the possiblity of recounting to votes to determine if the results were correct. That option does not exist with these machines.

Now that Maryland has proven that the machines are vulnerable to outside attacks, it is inexcusible for any politician to oppose the addition of voter-verifiable paper reciepts to these machines. It's not hyperbolic to say that the future of democracy in this country depends on it. It's a fact.

Posted by thorswitch at January 31, 2004 02:13 PM | TrackBack