You might just be able to stand in front of Brit Williams with a big toe stuck to your forehead, confident that he’d never notice if you called yourself a voting machine. Williams managed to miss the plain fact that if you remove the WiFi card from the machine, it will no longer boot! That’s right, you can’t turn it on without violating his recommendations. The WinVote voting machines have to be shipped into the polling places with their WiFi components fully activated during the entire Election Day -- or whenever in use for any purpose -- at least one Virginia election official was honest enough to admit to Jim March of Black Box Voting that they had “scanned” the machines and found that WiFi was active, and determined that it used the older “WEP” (read: crackable) WiFi password security.
“CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?”
WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS AND VOTING MACHINES
Within the last year, WEP has been thoroughly broken. And while the WinVote WiFi is supposedly used only to communicate between stations at the precinct to compile the results from multiple voting machines, and in the warehouse to accept programming before the election, anyone who knows the protocols, such as current or former vendor staff, consultants and elections staff, can either “remote read” what’s in that voting machine (early votes and during Election Day -- or worse, can perhaps drop in little changes that affect vote results. The current WEP password is now little more than a “locked screen door.” (4)
And this isn't theoretical. It has resulted in millions of dollars of real-world credit card theft. (5)
THEY CHANGED THE MACHINES – NO THEY DIDN’T – WELL THEY DID …
* Voting systems are assigned an ID number that identifies the version and configuration. (The version number on the WinVote machine we photographed was “1.54”)
* If the programming or configuration changes, it must be reported. (No reports of changes have been forthcoming)
* Each version requires a separate testing and certification process (Only one WinVote version is certified, the “1.54”)
* Most programming changes require a new version number. (No new version numbers appear to have been deployed anywhere)
Yet, Black Box Voting has learned that the software currently used in many Virginia counties, including Arlington where the hammering incident took place, was altered by programmers for Advanced Voting Solutions. This took place at the request of Fairfax county in 2004. While the changes were “minor” according to our Fairfax source, no code review was performed by anyone.
That means:
* The “1.54” version being used in Fairfax and Arlington is not the same as the approved “1.54” version.
* We should expect to see reports that the programming and/or configuration has changed, but no reports seem to exist.
A picture taken on May 9, 2007 by Black Box Voting shows an AVS WinVote machine in use in Fairfax County prominently displaying the version number “1.54” - which is the same version originally reported in both the federal and Virginia certifications of mid-2002, even though the code differs.
THE PONZI SCHEME
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