1y ago

Computer scientist shows how to tamper with Georgia voting machine, in election security trial: “All it takes is five seconds and a Bic pen.”

www.ajc.com /politics/witness-shows-how-to-tamper-with-georgia-elections-in-security-trial/WUVKCYNV3ZGOVNB6X6TDX2GEFQ/

Computer scientist shows how to tamper with Georgia voting machine, in election security trial: “All it takes is five seconds and a Bic pen.”::An expert witness for plaintiffs seeking to bar Georgia's touchscreen voting machines showed a crowded courtroom how he could tamper with election res

16 comments

It scares the shit out of me that the US has so fully adopted voting machines. They are incredibly unreliable and it would be so easy for a bad actor to hack an election. Especially with FPTP, it would be so easy to goose the numbers in a couple of key districts and swing an election for whomever you wanted to win. It's almost definitely already happened several times.
In Canada we still do voting on paper, but then the votes are counted electronically and the paper copy is kept for recounting by a human later if needed. It's sort of the best of both worlds.
- It's not everywhere.
  States that do vote by mail are just like you describe -- paper ballots collected and counted by computer, with the paper preserved.
- Not all states are fully electronic. Many districts (including mine) are run on paper ballots that are then scanned.
  I would be more concerned about the upstream tabulation systems. The possibility of making bulk changes is much more harmful than tampering with single voting machines.
  There was a mad dash to electronic voting after the Bush v Gore hanging chad fiasco. A lot of people are still focusing on the voting machines vs. the integrity of centralized tabulation systems.
https://citp.princeton.edu/our-work/voting/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVWIOwSkMew
What's really sad is this is literally the same guy who proved the same thing in 2006. (I'm going on a limb and assuming this is the same J. Alex Halderman who wrote this paper at Princeton)
This has been an ongoing problem for almost twenty fucking years.
I went looking for this info because it spurred a memory. The "bic pen" was a part of this hack nearly 20 years ago, and the reference to it made me remember the original.
Fucking travesty.
I have said it before and I'll say it again, electronic voting does not work and is a bad idea.
The election system is dependant on trust, trust that the votes are not changed nor counted incorrectly.
This works with paper ballots, you keep the ballot box sealed and under observation by observers from different parties, they can then verify that the ballots have not been changed after voting, you count the ballots together, in front of everyone, they can then verify that counting was done correctly.
With electronic voting the votes are cast by interacting with buttons on a black box, no one is able to verify that the votes are recorded correctly nor that they are counted correctly during the actual election.
- I like the system we have in New Mexico. (Yes it's one of the 50 states)
  You can go to any poling place, and they print you a local ballot for where you live, right there. You fill in the bubbles with your choices, then run it through a scanner machine on your way out.
  You get instant counting and can track results live all day. If there's a technical problem, or any uncertainty in the results, you can always go back to the paper and hand count.
  It gives the benefits of all the options.
  
  How.is it providing secrecy and result checking at the same time?
- Electronic voting works wonders. All you need to sacrifice is anonymity.
  
  Which is why it doesn't work in real elections.
  Voter anonymity is critical to a functioning democracy.
Anyone who knows even the slightest bit about how computers work know this is a bad idea.

16 comments