It Is IMPOSSIBLE To Prevent Voting Machine Hacking (X)

[kster]

August 7, 2007 at 16:50:28

by Woody Smith

For twelve years I was in charge of Internet services at a truly major Federal agency noted largely for its unsurpassed contributions to high technology in the civilian realm. Furthermore, I was also in charge of information technology security for the most prominent office in that agency, one that was a particularly juicy target for hackers. I have traveled the country giving speeches on methods to prevent penetration by hackers and malicious computer code in heterogenous computing environments, and in the steps that must be taken to recover when such penetration has occurred. NOBODY ever penetrated any computer under my charge at any time during my tenure.

When I tell you the following you can take as the genuine truth: There is NO POSSIBLE WAY UNDER THE SUN to "fix" voting machines to ensure their accuracy or their immunity from penetration from a party seeking personal gain. They are ALL, regardless of what "generation" they are, past, present or future, utterly unfixable in this context, whether or not they contain paper trails, and whether they're used merely to mark ballots or cast votes or are used to tabulate votes cast by other means (as with optical scanners). Every computer ever built is vulnerable to attack, and there is no possible way to render any computer genuinely invulnerable.

SNIP...If we wish to rebuild confidence in our elections and any genuine integrity in our balloting processes, we must recognize that the stakes in our election outcomes are simply too high to introduce any potential for tampering at any point in the process -- any such vulnerability will CERTAINLY be exploited because of the truly enormous temptations that such high stakes represent. It is literally IMPOSSIBLE to provide any kind of integrity in ballot casting and vote counting unless the voter can actually SEE and fully understand for whom his or her ballot has ACTUALLY been cast, and those ballots are counted in the presence of bipartisan witnesses.

This goal can ONLY be achieved by PAPER ballots, manually marked and manually tabulated. NO OTHER SOLUTION IS OR CAN EVER BE ACCEPTABLE if the goal is to provide integrity in our balloting and in the counting of our votes. ANY device inserted between a voter and the tabulation of his or her vote introduces vulnerabilities to the system and diminishes confidence in the integrity of our elections.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_woody_sm_070807_it_is_impossible_to_.htm

POSTED IN ER

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x479831

[Peace Patriot]

1. So how did these extremely insecure and insider hackable voting systems get fast-tracked

across the country, during the 2002 to 2004 period, with no testing, or secret private company testing (ha, ha, ha), virtually no audit/recount controls, and their 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations?

Therein lies a tale. If you don't know it, then you cannot possibly understand what is happening now--70% of the American people opposed to the Iraq War, and wanting it ended, and the so-called 'Democratic' Congress, that we just supposedly elected, ESCALATING the war instead, and giving Bush and Cheney another $100 billion of our tax dollars--carved out of our FUTURE revenues--to keep killing Iraqis until they sign over their oil rights, and this so-called 'Democratic' Congress furthermore giving Bush and Cheney MORE powers to spy on us, and doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to curtail their many, many crimes and tyrannical actions.

It's a puzzle. It's shocking. But if you know that the electronic voting bill (non-transparent vote counting by rightwing Bushite corporations) was passed in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution (October 2002), you begin to understand. The two things are closely related. The one, the IWR, guaranteed an unjust and heinous war. The other, the so-called "Help America Vote Act," provided the means to shove that war down the throats of the peace-loving, justice-loving American majority. Soon afterward, in Feb. 2003, 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq war--a significant majority. 56% would be a landslide in a presidential election (and believe me, it was). Our political establishment, both D and R, knew that that number would grow, as Americans increasingly grokked the evil nature of this war. It's now a staggering 70% opposed. It was to defeat that great American majority that "trade secret" vote counting was rushed into production--at the same time as the war--with a $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle by the Anthrax Congress, with not just the Bushites in support, but ALSO nearly ALL the Democrats. One of the chief architects of this fascist coup was Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd (whom Diebold and ES&S now owes some favors) (--you heard it here first), in collusion with the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress--Tom Delay and Bob Ney.

This was not a mistake. This was not ignorance. This was deliberate. We are so inured to what APPEARS TO BE stupendous idiocy that sometimes can't see the truth. IF this e-voting bill had been well-intended, why didn't they require a 100% hand-count for the first few elections using these new machines. EVERYBODY knows about computer viruses. EVERYBODY knows about computer crashes. It merely takes COMMON SENSE to know that there should be a substantial check on machine fraud. The bill was passed with NO REQUIREMENT of a "paper trail" AT ALL! NO check! ZERO check! NO recountability!

End. Of. Story.

The bastards who did this knew what they were doing. Our most precious and important right--our right to vote, the power that is very nearly the definition of our sovereignty as a people, the power that establishes the will of the people, and that, in truth, creates our government and invests it with authority--was turned over to rightwing Bushite corporations using 'TRADE SECRET' code, with no mechanism by which to check their results.

And all our party leaders agreed, and furthermore did their best to keep it "under the radar" of the American people. We expect Bushites to an evil thing like this. We do not expect it of Democrats. That's how they fooled the People. No one raised the alarm.

And it is a logical progression from that--from our party leaders' collusion on "trade secret" vote counting--to their voting to escalate the war on Iraq, in the teeth of 70% opposition by the American people.

"Trade secret" vote counting is not the only thing wrong with our election system. But it is the 'coup de grace' --the final kick of the fascist boot--that makes change impossible. It permits massive vote stealing, on a scale never before possible--at the speed of light, away from all human observation, without detection. It is ANATHEMA to democracy. And it is a no-brainer that we must find a remedy for this, or our democracy is OVER.

The remedy is best achieved at the state/local level. The movement has begun. It started small, on Nov. 3, 2004, but it has grown huge now. The new Calif Secretary of State, Debra Bowen--one of the miracles of the 2006 election (the people outvoting the machines)--is leading the charge. Support her! The bad guys will get her if they can. (They got our previous reforming Sec of State.) Don't let it happen! And, wherever you are, pressure on your local county registrar is probably the most important thing you could be doing right now, to save our democracy.

They don't have to get rid of their expensive new crapass machines. All they have to do is this:

1. A ballot for every vote.
2. Count all the votes in public view, and post the results at the precinct level before any electronics are involved.

They can use the machines for data storage and conveyance. They don't have to admit that they wasted millions of dollars. Just COUNT THE GODDAMNED VOTES!

It sounds simple. But there is a whole lot of corruption involved. So it isn't going to be simple to get this done, and it likely won't be quick. But it is a MUST DO.