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Post by PapaSmurerf on Jul 12, 2007 2:16:23 GMT -5
Those who cast the votes decide nothing,
those who count the votes decide everything. The Coalition for Visible Ballotsis a non-partisan, grassroots movement of unprecedented unity on a single issue. That issue is very simple: Invisible ballots are a bad idea. These organizations and individuals are united on the proposition that "We at the Coalition for Visible Ballots believe that the only way to restore fair and honest elections to our country is to set aside ALL machines, including electronic of any type, touchscreen, optical scan counters--and use PAPER BALLOTS, HAND-COUNTED IN PUBLIC VIEW. Is this a perfect system? No. But as one of our foremost knowledgeable members, Bev Harris has said, elections conducted in this manner have perhaps five or six "attack vectors", whereas those conducted with electronic equipment have about 50 or 60. Many of the expert researchers, journalists, computer programmers and security engineers, mathematicians and statisticians who have been studying this critical issue have come to the same conclusion, and we stand with them: PAPER BALLOTS, HAND-COUNTED in PUBLIC VIEW. Will we ever see this happen? Maybe not. Is it an uphill battle? Probably. But we will accept nothing less as a "repair" or "temporary fix" to our election systems."
coalition4visibleballots.homestead.com/Dr. Ron Paul and G. Edward Griffin are just 2 of the many members of The Coalition for Visble Ballots.
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Post by PapaSmurerf on Aug 3, 2007 19:08:42 GMT -5
Hackers find serious problems in California voting machinesBusiness and Law By Humphrey Cheung Monday, July 30, 2007 15:57 Sacramento (CA) – A new California study has found that several electronic voting machines have serious security vulnerabilities. California Secretary of State Debra Bowen commissioned the study which pitted two hacker teams, better known as “Red Teams” against voting machines manufactured by Diebold, Hart and Sequoia. The hackers found several security problems and were able to change firmware, access the election database and even open up the machines without detection. The study was headed by Matt Bishop from UC Davis. The first Red Team was lead by Robert Abbott and his team examined the Diebold and Hart machines at a secure facility in Sacramento. Giovanni Vigna and Richard Kemmerer from UC Santa Barbara matched wits with the Sequoia voting machine. Both teams found alarming security problems in all the machines. Bishop summed it up by writing, “The red teams demonstrated that the security mechanisms provided for all systems analyzed were inadequate to ensure accuracy and integrity of the election results.” Abbott’s team was able to access election data directly by exploiting vulnerabilities in the Diebold machine’s Windows operating system – an operating system that all three e-voting machines use. They were also able to bypass locks and other physical security with “ordinary objects”. Election data on the Hart machine was also easily compromised. Vigna’s team also found physical security on the Sequoia voting machine to be inadequate. They gained access to the machine’s insides by unscrewing a few locks and discovered that the screws with not protected by seals. The study adds that all three machines used some form of Windows operating system and that each machine's firmware was easily overwritten by the teams. Bishop complains that his teams didn’t have enough time to fully document all the security vulnerabilities because they study started in mid-June and ended July 20th. Secretary of State Bowen had said that the deadline could not be extended because the counties need at least six months to examine the findings. Bishop added that Abbott’s team was close to finding several other problems, but simply ran out of time. Reposted from tgdaily
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Post by PapaSmurerf on Dec 8, 2007 20:08:24 GMT -5
Hacking Democracy Electronic voting machines count about 87% of the votes cast in America today. But are they reliable? Are they safe from tampering? From a current congressional hearing to persistent media reports that suggest misuse of data and even outright fraud, concerns over the integrity of electronic voting are growing by the day. And if the voting process is not secure, neither is America's democracy. The timely, cautionary documentary HACKING DEMOCRACY exposes gaping holes in the security of America's electronic voting system. In the 2000 presidential election, an electronic voting machine recorded minus 16,022 votes for Al Gore in Volusia County, Fla. While fraud was never proven, the faulty tally alerted computer scientists, politicians and everyday citizens to the very real possibility of computer hacking during elections. In 2002, Seattle grandmother and writer Bev Harris asked officials in her county why they had acquired electronic touch screen systems for their elections. Unsatisfied with their explanation, she set out to learn about electronic voting machines on her own. In the course of her research, which unearthed hundreds of reported incidents of mishandled voting information, Harris stumbled across an "online library" of the Diebold Corporation, discovering a treasure trove of information about the inner-workings of the company's voting system. Harris brought this proprietary "secret" information to computer security expert Dr. Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University, who determined that the software lacked the necessary security features to prevent tampering. Her subsequent investigation took her from the trash cans of Texas to the secretary of state of California and finally to Florida, where a "mini-election" to test the vulnerability of the memory cards used in electronic voting produced alarming results. . . .
Full article at HBO.com
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