shadow
11-12-2004, 12:52 PM
Well the election has come and gone and I have no urge to do the who won debate...
However I found something disheartening at the very least.
I was talking with a friend about the U.S. election and I brought up electronic voting machines and made some comment about it being a interesting idea. When I mentioned that he blew me out of the water claiming all sorts of back doors and problems. Initially I said that it was supposedly incredibly safe and everyone is endorsing it. (I thought he had his facts wrong at first) He said that people were able to get onto a ftp site for diebold and get files relating to the programming. He showed me all the files he supposedly got from the ftp site... these really meant nothing to me because I am no programmer. I still did not really believe him completely but it did sound interesting so I thought I would wander around the net to see what people were saying.
A little bit shocked I found quite a bit of information.
Not only did I find numerous articles about mis counts because of these machines... but when the polling stations asked Diebold about the mistakes... they would respond that the discrepancies does not matter.
Now correct me if I am wrong... but tabulating votes is INCREDIBLY easy programming.. when I was in junior high I programmed a simple voting programs and it was easy. What I do not understand is how a huge corperation cannot get something so basic correct.
I found some interesting documentories on the subject I particularily liked this one.
http://homepage.mac.com/duffyb/nobush/iMovieTheater268.html
I looked around for a while.. but then to my suprise I found MULTIPLE sites which had instructions how to retrieve the password for GEM. (gem is the program used to tabulate these votes) Not only that but by simply using Access you could use the files in the program to change the percentage of votes and voter amounts.
Here is a example on one of the more pretty sites
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/voting.shtml#part1
Not only that tampering with the machines is not that hard as well... people were posting that you could change the hardware in the machines quite easily. Also the tamper proof label is nothing more than a printed sticky label... it looks like something I could make in less than 3 minutes with some avery paper.
I am not sure if I they have fixed the gaps. Although many websites have posted saying they have been issued notice to withdraw information about diebold machines from Diebold lawyers.
To conclude... I am shocked that the (arguabally) most technological country in the world has so many gaping holes in such a simple system. I was just wondering if you guys have heard any more info on this topic or if you know of any websites still posting Diebold files?
Also views on the topic are also welcome.
However I found something disheartening at the very least.
I was talking with a friend about the U.S. election and I brought up electronic voting machines and made some comment about it being a interesting idea. When I mentioned that he blew me out of the water claiming all sorts of back doors and problems. Initially I said that it was supposedly incredibly safe and everyone is endorsing it. (I thought he had his facts wrong at first) He said that people were able to get onto a ftp site for diebold and get files relating to the programming. He showed me all the files he supposedly got from the ftp site... these really meant nothing to me because I am no programmer. I still did not really believe him completely but it did sound interesting so I thought I would wander around the net to see what people were saying.
A little bit shocked I found quite a bit of information.
Not only did I find numerous articles about mis counts because of these machines... but when the polling stations asked Diebold about the mistakes... they would respond that the discrepancies does not matter.
Now correct me if I am wrong... but tabulating votes is INCREDIBLY easy programming.. when I was in junior high I programmed a simple voting programs and it was easy. What I do not understand is how a huge corperation cannot get something so basic correct.
I found some interesting documentories on the subject I particularily liked this one.
http://homepage.mac.com/duffyb/nobush/iMovieTheater268.html
I looked around for a while.. but then to my suprise I found MULTIPLE sites which had instructions how to retrieve the password for GEM. (gem is the program used to tabulate these votes) Not only that but by simply using Access you could use the files in the program to change the percentage of votes and voter amounts.
Here is a example on one of the more pretty sites
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/voting.shtml#part1
Not only that tampering with the machines is not that hard as well... people were posting that you could change the hardware in the machines quite easily. Also the tamper proof label is nothing more than a printed sticky label... it looks like something I could make in less than 3 minutes with some avery paper.
I am not sure if I they have fixed the gaps. Although many websites have posted saying they have been issued notice to withdraw information about diebold machines from Diebold lawyers.
To conclude... I am shocked that the (arguabally) most technological country in the world has so many gaping holes in such a simple system. I was just wondering if you guys have heard any more info on this topic or if you know of any websites still posting Diebold files?
Also views on the topic are also welcome.