In today’s L.A. Times there’s more bad news regarding Electronic voting machines: according to a review by the California Secretary of State, it seems those used in recent elections are all easily hacked. This doesn’t really come as much of a surprise, especially if you’ve seen the demonstration video, based on the Princeton University study of DieBold’s voting machines’ security (or lack thereof). In the video, they show just how easy it is to infect a machine with malicious software which alters the vote counts, & then erases itself, leaving no evidence. In a demo election, Benedict Arnold was able to defeat George Washington, even thought George received more votes.
Here’s a related cartoon I did several months before the last elections:
and what was so wrong with scantron sheets? is it really that hard to pencil in a bubble?
Comment by karen — July 29, 2007 @ 2:18 pm
Exactly. What I don’t get is why can’t these new machines just print out a page you can verify (much like a completed scan-tron), which is then fed into a counter to be tallied.
Comment by Kelly — July 29, 2007 @ 3:02 pm
No, your vote didn’t disappear; it simply got changed to “Republican”.
BushCheneyCorp.’04: “Yeah, we own your vote! Whatcha gonna *DO* about it?!
Comment by Reynard — August 3, 2007 @ 4:53 pm