Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Paper Ballots Forever

ScienceDaily (Aug. 11, 2009) — Computer scientists demonstrated that criminals could hack an electronic voting machine and steal votes using a malicious programming approach that had not been invented when the voting machine was designed. The team of scientists from University of California, San Diego, the University of Michigan, and Princeton University employed “return-oriented programming” to force a Sequoia AVC Advantage electronic voting machine to turn against itself and steal votes.

2 comments:

Thomas said...

At the very least, voting machines should print paper ballots and those should be kept as well, and all elections should be randomly hand-counted afterwards.

The idea that we need to skimp on the cost of voting machines is a bit ridiculous. They are at least as important as ATMs, and my ATM receipts are almost always printed out fine.

John said...

I don't understand what is driving the move to computerized voting machines anyway. Is counting votes such an expensive activity that our society can't afford to do it right?

I suspect there really is not reason other than the desire of governments to be "up to date" and the machinations of voting machine manufacturers.