" For every evil under the sun there is a remedy ...
July 30 2007 09:30 PM Cynthia Rosenberry
There is "[...]an ongoing Capitol Hill debate over whether to ban the use of electronic machines that lack paper trails. According to a recent New York Times report, sponsors of such an effort in the House of Representatives are hoping to pass a compromise version--requiring the paperless machines to be scrapped by 2012 instead of 2008--before Congress departs for its August recess at week's end. The Senate, however, appears to be moving more tentatively.
But the California findings suggest the paper trail requirement may not be a cure-all by itself: the testers, after all, were also able to manipulate the paper receipts produced by touch-screen machines in the Diebold and Hart machines. "
read full article:
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9752129-7.html
Scientists’ Tests Hack Into Electronic Voting Machines in California and Elsewhere
By CHRISTOPHER DREW, NY Times
Published: July 28, 2007
Computer scientists from California universities have hacked into three electronic voting systems used in California and elsewhere in the nation and found several ways in which vote totals could potentially be altered, according to reports released yesterday by the state.
The reports, the latest to raise questions about electronic voting machines, came to light on a day when House leaders announced in Washington that they had reached an agreement on measures to revamp voting systems and increase their security.
The House bill would require every state to use paper records that would let voters verify that their ballots had been correctly cast and that would be available for recounts.
The House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, and the original sponsor of the bill, Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, said it would require hundreds of counties with paperless machines to install backup paper trails by the presidential election next year while giving most states until 2012 to upgrade their machines further.
Critics of the machines said that some of the measures would be just stopgaps and that the California reports showed that security problems needed to be addressed more urgently.
The California reports said the scientists, acting at the state’s request, had hacked into systems from three of the four largest companies in the business: Diebold Election Systems, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia Voting Systems.
Thousands of their machines in varying setups are in use.
The reports said the investigators had created situations for each system “in which these weaknesses could be exploited to affect the correct recording, reporting and tallying of votes.”
Voting experts said the review could prompt the California secretary of state, Debra Bowen, to ban the use of some of the machines in the 2008 elections unless extra security precautions were taken and the election results were closely audited.
Matthew A. Bishop, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, who led the team that tried to compromise the machines, said his group was surprised by how easy it was not only to pick the physical locks on the machines, but also to break through the software defenses meant to block intruders.
Professor Bishop said that all the machines had problems and that one of the biggest was that the manufacturers appeared to have added the security measures after the basic systems had been designed.
read full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/28/us/28vote.html
The CA report (shows that eSlate was among those hacked):
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/ttbr/red_overview.pdf
From Hart Intercivic:
"Election Deemed Successful In Tennessee Counties--
Voting Equipment Manufacturer Hart InterCivic Supplies Equipment To 31 Tennessee Counties, More Than Doubling Their Service Area
Hart InterCivic, in association with Harp Enterprises, who markets and supports the Hart Voting System throughout Tennessee, provides the eSlate® voting device to 31 Tennessee counties including Knox County with more than 240,000 registered voters. --published August 23, 2006
"
read full article:
http://www.hartic.com/pr_view.php?prid=56
They say the last election was a success but given that the systems have been hacked without detection or any evidence of tampering afterwards, how do we really know that the systems weren't actually hacked in 2006? Beause of the flaw in the designs, we don't.
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