Voting machine expose. The saga continues
The Diebold voting machine story is speeding through the blogosphere, while major media hasn’t picked it up yet. I doubt they can ignore for too much longer. The expose shows how some voting machines have gaping security holes, and can even allow votes to be changed.
As of now, a DayPop search for this story in weblogs returns many results, while a Google News search only lists one major media story. This could turn out to be the biggest story ever launched by the blogosphere.
Atrios, a prominent blog, ran a piece on this. Check their comments section. Lots of database wonks, myself included, weighed in on how brain-damaged Diebold voting machines appear to be.
Many of those commenting were appalled that encryption and hash totals weren’t used. This is so elementary, yet it wasn’t done.
Encryption means the data is made unreadable to anyone who doesn’t have the decryption key, and that key should reside only on a deeply protected central server. Hash totals mean any change to a data file is instantly detectable.
Both of these technologies, encryption and hash totals, are relatively trivial for any seasoned programmer to implement, and they are unbreakable. Yes unbreakable. Any voting machine system should use them. The Diebold’s do not. Why?
PS This humorous comment was on Atrios:
“You realize some teenager halfway around the world will hack into our voting system just for fun, and no one will notice until Eminem gets elected president.”