20 states have electronic voting with touch screens that be maliciously calibrated to favor specific candidates, according to a Wired magazine blog article.
This story has been out there for a long time.
"If one candidate has a check box in one place and a different candidate has it in a different place, you can set it up so that if you press on one candidate it gets recorded for another candidate," said Matt Blaze, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who led one of three teams that co-wrote the report (.pdf) last year. "But if you press on the other candidate, it gets recorded correctly for that candidate. You can make it work perfectly normally in most of the screen, but have it behave the way you want in small parts of it."
For those not familiar with Wired, it's a magazine that focuses on new technology and its contributors tend to be computer "geeks" who know how computers can be hacked into.
In other words, if Wired says that machines are vulnerable -- America is in for a slew of electronic complications today.
At issue are touchscreen machines manufactured by ES&S, 97,000 of which will be used today in 20 states, including counties in the crucial swing states of Ohio and Colorado.
As The Brad Blog has warned for several months, these companies have not been as diligent as they need to be -- and the election officials in many instances are close to clueless.
Wired explained -- in detail (it's a great article. Please READ it) -- the process for calibrating the touchscreens allows poll workers or someone else to manipulate specific regions of the screen, so that a touch in one region is registered in another. "
"Someone attempting to rig an election could thus arrange for votes for one candidate to be mapped to the opponent."
The Brad Blog has listed some recent problems with electronic voting and it's alerts are updated regularly.
Recent Comments