Hackers make child's play of voting machines
What do I really worry about: Terrorists? No. Voter fraud? Hell, yes!
I am much more afraid of a Diebold voting machine than Osama bin Laden.
HBO had a show on voting machines a few months ago .. and actually set up a sequence where three people voted and a hacker hacked in and changed the votes .. BUT recorded that they had voted on a paper copy the way they actually had!
And now this from the NYTimes, July 28, 2007:
Scientists’ Tests Hack Into Electronic Voting Machines in California and Elsewhere
Computer scientists from California universities have hacked into three electronic voting systems used in California and elsewhere in the nation and found several ways in which vote totals could potentially be altered, according to reports released yesterday by the state.
The reports, the latest to raise questions about electronic voting machines, came to light on a day when House leaders announced in Washington that they had reached an agreement on measures to revamp voting systems and increase their security.
The House bill would require every state to use paper records that would let voters verify that their ballots had been correctly cast and that would be available for recounts.
.....The California reports said the scientists, acting at the state’s request, had hacked into systems from three of the four largest companies in the business: Diebold Election Systems, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia Voting Systems.
Thousands of their machines in varying setups are in use.[..]"
A lot of Democrats think our elections have already been hi-jacked by Republicans .. by controlling resources and making sure that Afro-American and low income voters didn't have enough machines and voting precincts .. and by pressuring US Attorney Generals to participate in vote caging.
When Monica Goodling, with immunity in her hot little hand, recently testified before Congress about the US Attorney scandal, she made several references to caging. Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) said she wasn't familiar with the term and asked Goodling to clarify. Goodling hemmed and hawed, finally said that caging is "a direct-mail term, that people who do direct mail, when, when they separate addresses that may be good versus addresses that may be bad."
What that means in straight talk is vote caging is an illegal trick to get rid of minority voters -- who tend to vote for Democrats -- by getting them knocked off the voter rolls.
It's a fact that in 2004 the Bush/Cheney camp sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to certain voters' homes. Letters returned --"caged"-- were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses.
Who were these evil fakers? Students, homeless people .. and, you have to love this, American soldiers on duty in Iraq .. all in predominantly African American and Democratic areas.
One of the things Congress wants to know in this US Atty investigation is whether senior officials at the White House and the Justice Department tried to reward Karl Rove's protege -- Timothy Griffin of Arkansas -- with a US Attorney position because Griffin had engaged in "illegal voter suppression tactics."
And did these same officials hope to cover it up by bypassing the confirmation process?
All that could help explain the White House's role in the US Atty firing purge.
THIS is why senators are so hot on this investigation.
Ah well .. we may never have a totally tamper-proof voting system of ANY kind .. it's just too huge of a task with too many stages of transferring information.
No electoral system is absolutely tamper-free, but Paper and Pencil, locked and sealed ballot-boxes, and hand-counted votes .. that's the best way to go. Thank goodness we still vote this way in Oklahoma.
This shouldn't be partisan folks .. our democracy is at stake.
