[FRIAM] voting machine tampering

[Pamela McCorduck]

The National Academies, which did a preliminary study on this, think 
the systems are very vulnerable to fraud, much of it undetectable.   
Two kinds of problems:  the technological ones, where voting machines 
can be hacked--wirelessly or otherwise, and tampered with.  The social 
problems: like school boards, each local voting authority has its own 
rules, so no one-program-fits-all exists (or can exist).   Poll 
watchers and workers are mostly political sinecures, and such people, 
often elderly and not well educated, can barely manage the technology 
they have, let alone anything more sophisticated.




On Nov 7, 2006, at 10:22 AM, Robert Holmes wrote:

> Not really no. About 30% of the installed machines are the Diebold 
> touch-screen model that does NOT give you a printout. There's no paper 
> trail and absolutely no way to check that what the person voted for is 
> what the machine recorded. In addition, Diebold won't release source 
> code because it's proprietary. And the Independent Testing Authority 
> refuses to release details of its test program. And anyway, in some 
> states ITA testing is voluntary - vendors only need to provide a 
> letter that their machines are capable of passing the tests.
>
> So from a computer science or security perspective, how robust do you 
> think this system is?
>
> Robert
>
> On 11/6/06, Owen Densmore < owen at backspaces.net> wrote:Won't the 
> electronic voting at least provide a hope for analysis,
>> especially of "irregularities"?
>>
>>      -- Owen
>>
>> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Om sarwa prani hitangkaram...(May all that breathes be well.)

					Balinese farmer's prayer
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