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anne.reed
Member
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Posted: Tue Apr 29th, 2008 12:45 am |
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Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 7:07 PM
Subject: [election] PC World Computer Magazine: U.S. Presidential
Election Can Be Hacked
U.S. Presidential Election Can Be Hacked
by Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
Thursday, April 10, 2008 5:30 PM PDT
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144431/us_presidential_election_can_be_hacked.html
This year, the U.S. will pick a new president using electronic voting machines that can be hacked, security experts said Thursday at the RSA [Security] Conference in San Francisco.
As the November election approaches, the question before officials is not how to fix known bugs in their e-voting systems, but rather, how best to check them for fraud, said David Wagner, an associate professor with the University of California, Berkeley's computer science department.
Wagner was part of the team that audited California's voting systems during the state's review of electronic voting, and the problems his team found affect counties across the U.S. "The three systems we looked at are three of the most widely used around the nation," he said during an e-voting panel discussion at the show. "They're going to be using them in the 2008 elections; they're still going to have the same vulnerabilities we found."
...... About a quarter of the votes cast in the upcoming election will be on electronic voting equipment with no paper trail, Wagner said. And even the states that keep paper records are not necessarily checking their results. Only about a third of all states have records that are regularly audited.
That's too bad, he said, because the ability to check whether your voting system has been hacked is of paramount importance. "Security is not the most important thing," he said. "What's more important for elections is auditability. "
Read the entire article:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144431/us_presidential_election_can_be_hacked.html
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My Comments on the PC World article:
I agree completely with David Wagner, but would add that any federal, state, or local elections can likewise be hacked undetectably due to the utter lack of independent scrutiny over elections in 49 States (NM is the only state which subjects its election results to independently administered post-election audits), and one way to improve the chances that elections are not hacked would be to pass HR5036 with these amendments as quickly as possible.
HR5036 would fund paper ballots and manual post-election audits for the November election for jurisdictions who choose to take advantage of the opportunity.
US Democracy is worth preserving, and is vital to the well-being of humanity world-wide. It is doubtful that the US is truly democracy today because our ballots are secretly counted by private companies using software that is compiled into machine language that no human being can read; and post-election data analysis is consistent with ubiquitous vote miscount. Without manual independent post-election audits of paper ballots that voters created or verified, it is humanly impossible for anyone to claim that our votes are being accurately counted.
Take Action Now to Preserve our Own and our Childrens' Futures:
1. Purchase a copy of this PCWorld magazine and give copies of this article to your local election officials and legislators and ask them to conduct valid election audits like the audit proposal recommended here:
2. Contact your US Rep. and Senators to ask them to pass HR5036 with these amendments to ensure that its audits would detect any errors in unofficial vote counts.
Kathy Dopp
The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author
Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in
exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at
P.O. Box 680192
Park City, UT 84068
phone 435-658-4657
http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://electionarchive.org
History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of
Election Auditing Fundamentals
Vote Yes on HR5036
Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response. pdf
"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1816
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