Electronic Voting Machines

Devil5052 wrote:Since the topic is now Electronic Voting Machines, I see no reason why all voting is not done via the internet. (Security could be easily controled just as it is when people spend Thousands of dollars securely buying things online)
We all know it's coming, so why not speed it up?

That's wouod be impossible task and I can give you multiple reasons as to why that should never be done. Off the top there is no way to control the security of the users computer itself.... When you order something online a over secure connection your computer is sent a public key, this public key can be used to encrypt the data you are going to send but it cannot be used to decrypt it, for that you need the private key. Where the issue arises is that data is not encrypted until you hit the submit button, for example... If you input your credit card information into text box you could possibly have what they call a keylogger that records all your keystokes and sends that to a third party. Additionally you could also have malicious software that could change the data before its submitted.

There's also the issue of identification and without some kind of biometric method I don't see how that can be reliably done.

Richard S. wrote:As far as the machines they should be manufactured by the government with oversight by a committee of computer security experts chosen from both parties or by some other means that allows for multiple voices of dissent. Voting is far too important to allow anyone entity say "Trust us"...

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Manufactured by the gubment?

Hold on, Richard, you're not turning into one o'them goll-darned "socialists" on us here, are you?

No, but its not something that a private entity should have anything to do with. I loathe government involvement in business however for this I'd make an exception. We need a transparent process from start to finish where these machines are concerned where anyone that is within the process can and will see any improprieties. You won't get that with private companies. If it includes building a manufacturing plant to build them so be it.

Just yankin' ya a little, y'know.

If the military can put out specs for the B-2 bomber or a spy satellite, surely we can devise specs for voting machines which pass muster in doing all the things we need them to do, efficiently and securely.

But neither should we forget Al Gore's $600 milspec toilet seat.

stockingfull wrote:If the military can put out specs for the B-2 bomber or a spy satellite, surely we can devise specs for voting machines which pass muster in doing all the things we need them to do, efficiently and securely.

The difference there is they want to keep it secret and under wraps for obvious reasons. A lot of private companies would balk at the idea of having complete transparency in the manufacturing process... trade secrets etc.

I hear what you are saying Richard but I still feel that those security problems will be overcome (in the near future) as our present voting system is not much different than it was in 1776. I'm guessing...........within 5-10 years.

as our present voting system is not much different than it was in 1776. I'm guessing...........within 5-10 years.

In our county it wasn't broke.


I don't think so, the only way to protect a computer system from malicious code is to never connect it to anything or ever let anything foreign near it. I don't know if there was any documented cases but its entirely possible for a computer to ship from the factory with malicious code on it. I know it's happened with pre- packaged software.

As the computers advance so does the complexity and amount of code which introduces more points of vulnerabilities, even from the little bit of php programming I've done I can tell you it's not that hard to write some pretty advanced programs but the hurdle comes with making it secure. Who's to say someone at microsoft or elsewhere isn't going to introduce code to skew an election if it was done online?

Too many possibilities for someone with a lot of knowledge to do what they want, the code for these machines is closed source. That means no one except the makes know exactly how its written. This is bad thing as it can contain anything... it only takes one line of code to completely change a some numbers.