BobHarris.com - GAO: electronic voting machines are pure fraud-bait, not to mention total crap

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Juan Cole

GAO: electronic voting machines are pure fraud-bait, not to mention total crap

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Friday, 21 October 2005

Well, they didn't use those exact words. But that's the gist.

The following should horrify any American who gives a damn about any remnant of actual democracy.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress charged with examining what the hell is actually going on with our tax dollars, has issued a 107-page report confirming, among much else:

Some electronic voting systems did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, thus making it possible to alter them without detection.

It is easy to alter a file defining how a ballot appears, making it possible for someone to vote for one candidate and actually be recorded as voting for an entirely different candidate.

Falsifying election results [was possible] without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards.

Access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network.

Supervisory across to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords.

The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy.

The above is from this Kos post by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). There's more. Go read.

While the report and Rep. Conyers are careful not to call any particular election into question (cough cough OHIO cough), it is absolutely clear that the use of these machines must end.