Well, but thats the crux of it…were the election officials (which were, I though, supposed to be bipartisan) trustworthy? Because if they weren’t, then its a moot point anyway isn’t it? And if they were, then I have to lean towards them doing their jobs correctly (i.e. they WERE supposed to keep an eye, or ‘babysit’ those machines to prevent physical security breaches) unless there is some evidence they didn’t.
Well, I happen to agree that better technical solutions exist. I’m unsure WHY some of the decisions were made on these things and would be interested in seeing what the RFP was sent out (and the scope of work, technical and monetary requirements, etc) to the various vendors originally bidding these products…and WHO put out said RFP.
I’m all for closely evaluating this system and coming up with solutions to fix some of the perceived or real problems…and not just because my own company could bid on such a contract either.
BTW, FWIW, my guess is that it was a state agency that put out the RFP, that they didn’t define their requirements well (probably not really understanding all of the ramifications that have been brought up since), and that they went with the lowest bidder, instead of the best technical design or the one with the most secure features. Regrettable (burns me up when WE lose contracts to someone who underbids us but has a less viable technical solution) but its how our current system works. One need not go into elaborate conspiracy theories when simple incompetence and government bureaucracy will suffice as an explanation.
Physical access to the machines can be denied by keeping them in a locked room – no need for a dedicated babysitter, though the presence of Republican and Democratic watchdogs certainly didn’t hurt.
The door to this locked room would presumably be in near eyesight to at least some of the poll workers (if not right behind them … I’m imagining my own polling site).
Can you fix the election by hacking into just one of these PC’s, or would you have to hack into every PC at every precinct that has one? You can’t fix an election by fudging one precinct’s numbers.
Also, everyone, it’s apparent that for all these conceivable hacks to take place, one needs unfettered access to the tabulating computer. I don’t think it’s wise to assume easily-defeatable security.
I was a computer field tech in 2000, and did some work for Hennepin County here in Minnesota. The work I was doing was on the printer side, but I can confirm that they had a set up where all the precincts would report back to a central location.
Any idea what kind of network we are talking about here? Was it private point to point, public VPN…what? We’d need to know if the implication is that the data was somehow ‘hacked’ on route, or if the machines were ‘hacked’ from the outside.
Exactly. I’m highly doubtful that physical security was completely ignored and the machines were open to anyone wandering up to ‘hack’ the machines. I’m also doubtful that no security was put in place ON the machines (i.e. authentication, encryption, etc). I’m not saying its impossible, but this would be a pretty vast conspiricy and a pretty complicated process to change the vote by the margins we are talking in, say, Florida. If you only did it in a few place you’d have to so load the vote one way that it would stand out and be pretty obvious.
Yes…assuming anyone actually recorded the date/timestamp for the database file of course, referenced to when the database was SUPPOSED to be modified. Also, assuming the person isn’t a super hacker who has a utility to change the date/timestamp in windows. All things that COULD be done I suppose…but I still haven’t seen any evidence they were.
BTW, I found this cite that discusses the election, exit polls and the electronic machines.
Read through it if you are interested…I’d say (to my mind at least) that this issue is put to rest at least as far as ‘stole’ elections goes. I’m sure MANY on this board will disagree but I’ve yet to see anything even close to convincing that there was wide spread election fraud…or that exit polls are some kind of magical indicators that should be trusted over actual voting numbers if there is a discrepancy.
I was thinking, if you want to change the vote of a state, you’ll need to affect the votes in many districts to avoid being detected. If changing the vote has to be done district by district, that’s a HUGE job. Consolidated to a county makes it easier, but I’d imagine security would be tighter around a centralized point.
Cheesesteak correctly notes that the Fraud hypothesis must pass the plausibility test (among others, I might add).
I think it does. I am imagining that a mole programmer at Diebold slips in some errant code, allowing small changes in key states. This wouldn’t require a massive conspiracy. Similarly, the central tabulating software could conceivably be hacked by a single small group of people.
Look, I’m not saying anything like this happened. I’m saying that the exit polling firms should release their data so that we could rule out certain hypotheses.
Cheesesteak’s point about the difficulties of coordinating a large conspiracy should be kept in mind when reading the last 2 paragraphs above. Nonetheless, the absense of rather basic security measures is disturbing and indicates systematic vulnerabilities to this observer.
I don’t think it was one big conspiracy. I think people operated independently in each state where fraud occured. Also, whatever happened in any one state was not necesarily a coordinated effort. For example, in a state where vote suppression and vote fraud both occured, the supression may have been a separate operation from the fraud.
Exactly. Intimidation, sowing of confusion, not providing enough equipment or ballots for polling places meeting certain demographics, and maybe even outright fraud possibly including the manipulation of electronic tabulations. These things wouldn’t have to be the result of an organized top down effort. They could be the result of individuals operating independently doing their best for God and Country (as they see it) or their own financial interests. Small efforts by small groups or individuals whittling away votes here and there and leading to “death by a thousand cuts”.
But I will say that it’s not totally inconceivable to me that a small group of individuals could hack into Windows based tabulators via modem in key districts in key states nationwide and in a close race nudge things just enough to put their preferred candidate over the top.
Of course this is a pretty strong accusation and proof would be required. Bev Harris and the other folks at blackboxvoting.org are looking to see if there’s any proof of either local or nationwide manipulation. Hopefully nothing of the sort occurred but if it did we should know about it and it should be corrected.
Well, the long lines because of insufficient equipment, the challenges of large numbers of voters, the attempts to sow confusion about dates and locations; all of these seem to be aimed at minority precincts. This can easily be interpreted as an attempt to suppress the Democratic vote.
Bev Harris seems to feel that she has evidence of more direct types of attacks, whether she’s right or not still remains to be seen.
