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January 12, 2008 at 06:32:22

California Voted "NO" On Paperless, Insecure Voting Machines

by Sandy Sand     Page 1 of 2 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com
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Various California secretaries of state have been on of top of voting  machine vulnerabilities from the beginning, because they are hackable, riggable and left no paper trail.

Diebold's machines in particular, were under suspicion, and declared verboten in the state, because of the above, and Diebold refused to provide paper backup for verification.

Worse...Diebold's founder/owner publicly vowed to make sure Republicans and neocons would be elected, and is known to contribute heavily to their campaigns.  All Diebold contracts were cancelled and their use was banned in the state.

Los Angeles adopted the Inkavote Plus system, which came under suspicion for hacking vulnerability last August, and why it took so long for Secretary of State Debra Bowen to decertify the machines is a mystery.

Thirty days before our February 5th primary she issued a new series of security measures on L.A. County's system to prevent hackers who might want to tamper with the system.

Los Angeles County election officials were told to fix the problems...or else.

Unfortunately, or else, wasn't specified.

Working together with Bowen, local officials say they can fix the problems and institute the new security measures in time for the primary.

Well and good. Election fraud has always been a problem to one degree or another, and I want to be assured that all is kosher with the Inkavote Plus system, even if I'm still somewhat suspicious that any and all security measures might not be fully effective.

To be sure, any man who thinks he's built the smartest mouse trap to outwit the most wily of mice, is sure to go down to defeat when a really smart rodent comes along and outsmarts him.

Nothing is foolproof and what one man can invent another one can reinvent.

With invention always comes reinvention.  The more electronic wizardry there is the more people find ways to make it less enjoyable for us to use.

Love your email, but hate the spam.  Love all the info the Internet provides, but beware the mis-info.  There's never been an easier way to type up term papers or reports.  That's good.  Having them obliterated by a power surge or failure is bad. 

Good/bad. Bad/Good. Always taking the bitter with the better.

It's a mystery why banks have perfected transferring kazillions of dollars into accounts all over the world on a daily basis, but voting machines are so difficult to protect from the unscrupulous.

I'm sure voting machines can be as safe and protected as ATM machines.  Always suspicious, I wonder if someone or someones don't want them to be tamper-proof.

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Sandy Sand began her writing career while raising three children and doing public relations work for Women's American ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training). That led to a job as a reporter for the San Fernando Valley Chronicle, a weekly publication in Canoga Park, California. In conjunction with the Chronicle, she broadcast a tri-weekly, ten minuted newscast for KGOE AM. Following the closure of the Chronicle, Sand became the editor of the Tolucan Times and Canyon Crier newspapers in Burbank. She is currently a guest columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News and contributor to ronkayela.com

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Professor Bagnolo is a Renaissance man: Cultural Anthropologist, Architectural designer, painter, writer, novelist, theologian. As a child prodigy, abed with polio for almost two years, with an off the charts IQ, reading at the graduate level by 5th grade, offered an opportunity to skip three grades at age 8.Later He was a recipient of an Art Institute scholarship at age 11, a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Anthropology and in Painting and a merit scholarship in art, and was appointed a Graduate ...

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Professor Emeritus Peter BagnoloProfessor Bagnolo is a Renaissance man: Cultural Anthropologist, Architectural designer, painter, writer, novelist, theologian. As a child prodigy, abed with polio for almost two years, with an off the charts IQ, reading at the graduate level by 5th grade, offered an opportunity to skip three grades at age 8.Later He was a recipient of an Art Institute scholarship at age 11, a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Anthropology and in Painting and a merit scholarship in art, and was appointed a Graduate ...

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SOMEONE

"... Someone doesn't want them tamper proof" and Sandy I wonder who that might be? Wait, could it be the Rovites/Bushites? Naw. not those innocent mamma's boys... oh yes, it is them. isn't it? HotDamn! 

Well, they were always much better at incompetence than anyone else, why not branch out and try mass stupidity also. Nice piece.

 

by Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo (144 articles, 1 quicklinks, 94 diaries, 1190 comments) on Saturday, January 12, 2008 at 9:26:53 AM
 

Robert Sargent is co-owner of a Washington State commercial printing company with operations in Seattle and Redmond. He has an Economics degree from the University of Washington and occasionally plays alto sax with the Husky alumni band. An amateur economist, investor and photographer, and fiscally conservative moderate at heart, Robert has been a "yellow-dog Democrat" since the Bush administration "began screwing up the world beyond repair". Active in local and national political races, Mr. Sar...

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Robert SargentRobert Sargent is co-owner of a Washington State commercial printing company with operations in Seattle and Redmond. He has an Economics degree from the University of Washington and occasionally plays alto sax with the Husky alumni band. An amateur economist, investor and photographer, and fiscally conservative moderate at heart, Robert has been a "yellow-dog Democrat" since the Bush administration "began screwing up the world beyond repair". Active in local and national political races, Mr. Sar...

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"really smart rodent"

...yes, I can think of a few in the political arena...Rove...DeLay...etc...

by Robert Sargent (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 24 diaries, 290 comments) on Saturday, January 12, 2008 at 9:30:01 AM
 

Sandy Sand began her writing career while raising three children and doing public relations work for Women's American ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training). That led to a job as a reporter for the San Fernando Valley Chronicle, a weekly publication in Canoga Park, California. In conjunction with the Chronicle, she broadcast a tri-weekly, ten minuted newscast for KGOE AM. Following the closure of the Chronicle, Sand became the editor of the Tolucan Times and Canyon Crier newspape...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Sandy SandSandy Sand began her writing career while raising three children and doing public relations work for Women's American ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training). That led to a job as a reporter for the San Fernando Valley Chronicle, a weekly publication in Canoga Park, California. In conjunction with the Chronicle, she broadcast a tri-weekly, ten minuted newscast for KGOE AM. Following the closure of the Chronicle, Sand became the editor of the Tolucan Times and Canyon Crier newspape...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Wily wodents

Sarge, I think the real wily wodents have been insulted.

Pete, they're not smart enough to keep their schemes secret, but so far they've outsmarted the justice system, and just to cover their sorry asses they have Swiss bank accounts and newly purchased homes in foreign countries.

We should all apply for jobs as their travel agents, even if it would mean one-time, one-way tickets.  On the plus side...there's so many of them.

by Sandy Sand (129 articles, 0 quicklinks, 145 diaries, 1127 comments) on Saturday, January 12, 2008 at 9:58:14 AM
 

Sandy Sand began her writing career while raising three children and doing public relations work for Women's American ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training). That led to a job as a reporter for the San Fernando Valley Chronicle, a weekly publication in Canoga Park, California. In conjunction with the Chronicle, she broadcast a tri-weekly, ten minuted newscast for KGOE AM. Following the closure of the Chronicle, Sand became the editor of the Tolucan Times and Canyon Crier newspape...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Sandy SandSandy Sand began her writing career while raising three children and doing public relations work for Women's American ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training). That led to a job as a reporter for the San Fernando Valley Chronicle, a weekly publication in Canoga Park, California. In conjunction with the Chronicle, she broadcast a tri-weekly, ten minuted newscast for KGOE AM. Following the closure of the Chronicle, Sand became the editor of the Tolucan Times and Canyon Crier newspape...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Wodents have it

That should have been weel wascally wodents

by Sandy Sand (129 articles, 0 quicklinks, 145 diaries, 1127 comments) on Saturday, January 12, 2008 at 10:59:43 AM
 

Harpist, unemployed blue collar worker, and Bush basher living deep in the heart of Texas.
PappyHarpist, unemployed blue collar worker, and Bush basher living deep in the heart of Texas.

Wascally wabbits, wiley wodents...

...and other political malcontents will always find a way to wreck the machinery of free elections. The only difference between the days when political bosses stuffed ballot boxes and now is the level of intellect one needs to gum up the works. Even in that, if one knows someone who knows how to get the job of hacking the systems done, and can follow directions, the level of smarts required to break the "better" mousetrap drops significantly.

Just as there are websites around that specialize in stockpiling old computer virii, and have instructions on bomb building, I have no doubt that there are web sites with instructions about how to hack voting machines. An intrepid investigator with the right amount of time and access to these things could do significant damage with little to no actual work on their parts.

And all the above presupposes that the people who made the voting machines don't have people on their payrolls whose job it is to pre-break the machines in the first place.

Trust me, when it comes to computers, what can me made to work for the good can just as easily be made to work for the bad. Just ask anyone who has had, or has had to remove a virus manually. It sucks!

Part of the problem is the fact that these electronic voting machine companies use proprietary, PRIVATE, closed-source software to make their machines go. Because the code that makes them work is private, third parties are denied the ability to check the code for "errors"; intentional or otherwise.

As a quick "fer-instance", let's look at one of my favorite things, Linux. Linux is an open source operating system. That means that the source code is readily available, and can be reviewed by anyone with a mind to do so. That also means that those with the smarts can repair any problems. It also means that the vulnerabilities contained in the source code are well known, and fully exploitable.

On the other hand, Windows is a closed source, proprietary operating system. The only ones allowed to view the source code, or change it are people who work for Microsoft, or some of its satellite organizations (read software companies about to be absorbed by MS).

One would think that the open source system would be less secure than the closed source system. However, just the opposite is true. Where Windows gets numerous hackers making virii to exploit the serious security holes it contains, Linux gets hardly any.

How can this be? Because Linux is open source, most of the security holes have been plugged. That includes intentional holes left by less than scrupulous code monkeys. The openness of the source code leads to a much stronger system.

A friend of my roommate used to work for a well known anti-virus company. I'll not mention the name. He quit his job because the company was knowingly, purposely putting holes in the software specifically for the FBI and other intelligence gathering agencies. These holes were security breeches specifically set up so that data mining "virii" could be set up without the user's knowledge...or permission.

If this can be done just to allow the government access to your hard drive and its contents, is there any reason to believe that electronic voting machine companies don't have code with more holes than seriously ripe swiss cheese? No, there isn't. And considering the statements you mentioned from one of the Diebold big-wigs, we should be more on guard than ever.

Kudos to Cali on this one. Let's hope that the rest of the country gets behind this. If not, well, once again, we have allowed ourselves to offer up our freedoms to the highest bidder.

Blessed be!
Pappy

by Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 863 comments) on Saturday, January 12, 2008 at 2:26:03 PM
 

Sandy Sand began her writing career while raising three children and doing public relations work for Women's American ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training). That led to a job as a reporter for the San Fernando Valley Chronicle, a weekly publication in Canoga Park, California. In conjunction with the Chronicle, she broadcast a tri-weekly, ten minuted newscast for KGOE AM. Following the closure of the Chronicle, Sand became the editor of the Tolucan Times and Canyon Crier newspape...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Sandy SandSandy Sand began her writing career while raising three children and doing public relations work for Women's American ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation through Training). That led to a job as a reporter for the San Fernando Valley Chronicle, a weekly publication in Canoga Park, California. In conjunction with the Chronicle, she broadcast a tri-weekly, ten minuted newscast for KGOE AM. Following the closure of the Chronicle, Sand became the editor of the Tolucan Times and Canyon Crier newspape...

to see more of bio, click on member name

That was it!

Part of the problem is the fact that these electronic voting machine companies use proprietary, PRIVATE, closed-source software to make their machines go. Because the code that makes them work is private, third parties are denied the ability to check the code for "errors"; intentional or otherwise.

This was the lame-brained excuse I couldn't remember enough about to write about and why Diebold wouldn't let anyone check their machines' results.  Any they got away with this crap for quite a while.  Still are in some scarlet red places.

by Sandy Sand (129 articles, 0 quicklinks, 145 diaries, 1127 comments) on Saturday, January 12, 2008 at 7:42:28 PM
 

 

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