Electronic Voting and Security Issues

Electronic Voting and Security Issues

For those of you who voted recently as I did, there is a good chance you used the Diebold electronic voting system. I could not help wondering if my vote would be counted correctly at the end of the day. As some of you may remember, the Diebold electronic voting system has security flaws that may allow an individual to change the results of the ballots if the system is left unsupervised for less than a minute. I first heard about this on CNN two years ago where a Princeton Professor demonstrated on CNN how easily the system could be hacked to alter ballot results.

The virus can steal votes, hide all records of the transactions and worst of all, it can delete itself thus leaving no evidence the system was compromised.

I also think an individual with a small super-magnet can wipe out all the data to break the machine and register zero votes. No information would be preferable to corrupt information, and might force a re-vote with paper ballots.

The voting system has no real physical security as well. There are more than a 1000 Keys in circulation and all the boxes use the same key. In addition, an amateur locksmith was able to pick the lock in less than 10 seconds or you can remove a few screws at the bottom of the system to have total access to the components.

This is scary stuff and it makes you wonder what really happened in the previous elections and what will happen in future election too.

To date, more than 80% of U.S. voter use the Diebold electronic voting machines. Something needs to be reviewed and corrected fast.

Go Vote…