I suspect the world would be better if that percentage were even greater.
Matt Blaze: California voting systems code review now released
Keeping in the entire “hacker” theme, I read today on Bruce Schneier’s blog that code reviews of three voting machines that are proposed for use in California elections has been released. I found that (not surprisingly) someone that I knew had worked on one of them, and now that the report is published, he is free to talk (and blog) about it.
Matt Blaze: California voting systems code review now released
The problems we found in the code were far more pervasive, and much more easily exploitable, than I had ever imagined they would be.
I haven’t read the final reviews, but right now, security for voting machines seems to be a serious problem.
Matt exemplifies the best of the kind of hacker that I mentioned in my previous post, and here is participating in a project of monumental importance. At stake is literally the trust of the American people in the integrity of their democracy. It would be easy to put this control into the hands of a few companies who make millions of dollars selling voting machines, but as the reports that are coming out of this review indicate, they simply have not done a reasonable job of protecting the integrity of our democratic process, despite their assurances that exploits of such systems are impossible.
I’ll probably have some downtime next week, and will try to read more of the reports.
[tags]Security,California Voting Machines[/tags]
Comments
Comment from Mark VandeWettering
Time 8/6/2007 at 11:09 am
I must have missed the part where any of this had any to do with Bush, or with liberal or conservative biases. The purpose of this review in California was to determine the degree of confidence we should have in the results tabulated by the proposed system of electronic voting machines. Matt’s work (and the work each of the other teams so charged) demonstrates that there are multiple, serious, overlapping issues with these machines, ones that are ripe for abuse. Abuse by Democrats, abuse by Republicans, abuse by law enforcement, abuse in fact, by any nut job who thinks that a particular election outcome is desirable over the result that would be achieved by the a fair and accurate vote.
Your comment seems to imply that it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference as to who wins or loses. Indeed, it seems to imply that voting itself is unnecessary. It should come as no surprise that I disagree.
I nearly deleted this comment not because I disagreed with it, but because it actually has nothing to do with the original article, and is just an opportunity for political posturing. This blog isn’t about such posturing, and if any occurs, it will be mine. As always, I reserve the right to delete any comment I deem inappropriate on my blog, and this kind of comment will not become the norm here. If you like, there is an appropriate place for such comments, and that is on your own blog.
Comment from Kevin VandeWettering
Time 8/5/2007 at 1:56 pm
My thinking is that it doesn’t make a heck of a lot of difference whether the voting machines work, when we get about the same candidate from either political party. It’s because both parties have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. When it comes down to basic decision making, both party candidates make almost exactly the same decisions.
Articles like this are more liberal goop in complaint to Bush winning the presidency. Now that we’ve proven that it is possible to compromise the voting system, no one has actually proved that anyone has. This is always attributed to conservatives doing election tampering. That hasn’t been proven. What has been proven is democrats recruiting illegal aliens to vote.