Sponsors

Can e-voting be trusted? Email Print

By nailmaker
12/05/2005 10:04:16 PM EST

Whether or not electoral fraud can be proved, the most important issue is whether the current electoral system can be trusted.

Clearly it can not. The GAO report is unequivocal. Electronic vote tampering is not only possible, it is down right easy. It can be pulled off with relatively little effort.

Whether or not we believe that the 2004 election was stolen is not the point here. My point is that because of the way e-voting is implemented, the electoral system is ripe for unprecedented abuse and we need to do some serious hell raising. Quickly.

Let's keep in mind that this country has no uniform electoral standards, has contracted out vote collection and counting to unabashedly partisan corporations, is putting its trust in secret and proprietary (and crappy) e-voting software, lets e-voting companies pay for their own testing and certification, and allows campaign chairpersons to run elections.

Why is America so trusting? Why is it so hard to hold this thought in our heads: electoral fraud is now possible on a scale never before imaginable.

There's always been electoral fraud. From both sides. The big difference now is that e-voting makes it trivial for very few individuals to tamper votes on a massive scale.

Paper ballot frauds can't scale. Paper is matter. Disappearing or altering large amounts of matter is hard. It takes lots of time and people. Large conspiracies are hard to pull off and hard to keep secret. So paper ballot fraud is self-limiting.

E-votes are bits. Moving, altering and disappearing bits is nearly effortless. Any self-respecting hacker can write code that automatically penetrates thousands of vulnerable computers, alters vast amounts of data and covers its tracks. It only takes minutes to run the code. One guy, alone, can conceivably pull this off. No complicated conspiracy, no loose lips.

E-voting is a brave new world. Conventional wisdom from the paper ballot days does not apply.

For a while most people will think that nothing much has changed, except that the voting machines now look like their PCs. Wrong. Everything's changed. And until people wake up to the fact, massive electoral fraud will be a very real possibility.

And an irresistible temptation.

(Cross-posted in Daily Kos)


KEYWORDS: , , ,

Sign up for a Complimentary Member Account... Join the community! It's fast. And it'll allow you to take advantage of all this site's great features!

Poll

How sure are you your e-vote will be counted?
Completely. This is America, beacon of democracy 0%
Pretty sure, my ATM never lied to me 0%
Same odds as for paper ballots 10%
Dunno, it's a crap shoot 0%
It might be counted twice if I vote Republican 90%

Votes: 10
Results | Other Polls

Related Articles

Disclaimer: "Related Articles" are provided as a service to our readers (Via Google News Feeds created using this article's 'Keywords' as the search terms to generate the feed). It is important to note that if a "Related Articles" list is included with this story, the list will be updated frequently subsequent to the posting of this story and may thus contain articles with information not yet known at the time of this story's original publication.

< Jesus Wants You To Shop | Assassination and Fear: Why Do We Kill the Peacemakers? >
 Display:
Can e-voting be trusted? | 5 comments (4 topical, 1 editorial, 0 hidden)
I voted for Pat Buchanan online once..well (none / 1)
more than once...37,000 times to be exact.  It wasn't hard...I had a software program that I used in my job, and it took me five minutes to write the script, two hours to run it--pushed him from 3% to 14%.  The good news, though, is that it did get the network to take the poll off their News Website...And the point of this wee bit of e-disobedience, of course, is that no, online polls can't be trusted.

Another example: An unnamed Sacramento News station found on Channel 10 ran a Telephone poll asking viewers if the police were racially profiling...80% of the respondents said yes. They also had an online poll (for those who preferred to log in versus call in)...80% of the respondents online said no, that there was no racial profiling as far as they could tell.  The newscasters (being nothing more than attractive talking heads) were visibly befuddled by the discrepancy, but it was obviously a sign of current Sacramento Demographics: Poor people, and people of color (at least at the time) didn't have internet access and had to call in.  Those voting online were most likely more educated, affluent, and racially homogenous.  I don't know if there are racial figures available today for who is or isn't online, but my guess is that things haven't changed much in the last few years.

As far as I'm concerned, until I can get a valid paper receipt for my vote, I'll be voting absentee for the forseeable future.

Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right

by darthstar on 12/06/2005 03:03:06 PM EST

Great post (none / 0)
And agreed...we cannot trust the vote in this country so long as these things are true.

Thank god MA hasn't bought any of those machines - but we are a rare state in that regard. :(

My lefty MA blog: Left in Lowell

by Lynne on 12/06/2005 03:58:12 PM EST

Absentee all the way, baby (none / 1)
Although I suppose unless I stand there and supervise the counting of paper absentee ballots, I still won't trust election results.

by SusanG on 12/06/2005 10:10:50 PM EST

another related article (none / 1)
I don't know how to post to the "related articles" box, so here's this:

Diebold insider alleges company plagued by technical woes

Great diary, by the way. I didn't see it on Kos, otherwise I would have recommended the hell out of it. By the time I got there, though, the time to recommend had run out.

by Nate Roberts on 12/07/2005 04:01:54 AM EST

Can e-voting be trusted? | 5 comments (4 topical, 1 editorial, 0 hidden)
 Display: