Hack it!

Most of you know that I spend the majority of my day working in the realm of computer security.  Round about every four years, the discussion of the security of voting machines comes up again.  This topic is a natural intersection of my political fanboydom and my profession, so I always make it a point to check out what folks are saying. 

I stumbled on this today, and if you've got about 20 minutes to watch both parts, I'd recommend it.  It'll give you a real sense about how genuinely vulnerable voting machines are to tampering. 

Now I understand that no system is perfectly invulnerable, but there is some real cause for concern with most modern voting machines.  In the past, it took a fairly sizable cohort of folks to maliciously influence the outcome of an election.  With current machines it really only takes one malicious user to create fairly serious havoc in a precinct. 

If we are serious about transparency in our electoral process, we've got to open up the software and processes associated with these machines and make them available for public, professional scrutiniy.  Until then, it's really a crap shoot.

Comments

[Bill]

So, wait... was this just a really long advertisement? Or was it a demonstration that we need better trained poll workers (who evidently miss several signs of fraud and malicious actions)?

I think we should go back to the Athenian system. Everyone should gather in the square and we can vote by a simple show of hands. If you try to sneak away because you are bored or tired or hungry, you'll find ropes covered in paint locking you in place. Fines would be levied for people marked with paint or found at home on voting day (or with the size of the current population, voting week).

For a more serious comment: It does seem that an open source software/process could be made more secure. But I think we'd have trouble convincing people about that. It goes against the generally accepted notions of security. You'd probably have an easier time convincing Microsoft that open source software is the way to go.