Vote Tabulating Machines with a Security Hole

The article was posted on Slashdot. I usually stay clear of posting news from known sites [because anybody that has any idea about this world can get to them :)] but I was curious what AO thinks about this. Especially with the [confirmed or not?] rumours about the rigging of the previous US elections.

Vote Tabulator Security Hole Exposed

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Black Box Voting has exposed a security hole in Diebold machines that tabulate votes collected from electronic voting machines. A code entered into the tabulator's user interface duplicates the "secure" counts into an insecure count which can be changed, and counted instead.

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http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/30/2322208

I believe there isn't enough security measures [as those referred by the links in the article] anybody can take to make sure nobody will try to change the count. It's politics we're talking about here... If they're dealing with a lot of logs, those logs can misteriously disappear [let me guess... at the hands of hackers or terrorists].

Any thoughts on this?

The oldest pole in history was the Magna Carter. It was flawed. As are all poles. Get over it.

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Originally posted here by jinxy
The oldest pole in history was the Magna Carter. It was flawed. As are all poles. Get over it.

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I'm not 'into' it to need to get out of. But this is a known flaw for about a year now that hasn't been properly fixed. I don't aim at turning this thread into yet another conspiracy theory discussion because, frankly, i'm quite sick of them [and the afferent bitching].

It's merely a security/cosmos discussion [I hesitated where to make the thread] about an issue that should concern some people... about democracy and whatnot.

Yeah everything's flawed, we're all computer enthusiasts and have the best examples before our eyes [and in the monitor]. But that doesn't mean improvement should be completely disregarded. We can't always go through life with a 'whatever' attitude.

not to stir anything, but whos to know who got how many votes??

you would just believe whatever you heard on the news the following day and once theyre counted.....

apart from that, true democracy is a myth and does not exist :)

True democracy is a myth, and it wasn't my intention of saying that I believe otherwise. But at least for the most part it's made to seem as it exists [I am aware of the fact that it still has no value that way]. In this case, however, there's absolutely no cover, no false pretense about it.

I wouldn't even bother voting, I guess. And parties should stop spending tax-payers' money on elections and should just arm-wrestle the position they want. It's pretty much that way anyway.

The sad thing about the holes in the GEMS system is that it would seem deliberate.
Yes, voting fraud has been around for a long time, but it has never been so easy or so
obvious. Yes the winner of the election will only depend on what the news stations report,
and yes 99% of the population would never know the difference.

But this is just down right sad. The company the makes the software for the electronic vote
counting is a major republican contributor, and the electronic voting system was pushed
through just in time for the 2004 election by a republican incumbent, republican house, and
republican senate, validated by a republican supreme court.

If we all sit back and say "its always been tampered with, why fight it now?" then why even
bother having an election? We will all sit back and watch it get steadily worse and worse as
the years go by until we no longer have even a fake democracy. We’ll just have party
appointed officials who answer to no one at all.

Top this off with a currently privatized media system that legally is not required to tell the
truth in its broadcasts, brute force laws on the books that bully private organizations into not
criticizing politicians, and gee-dubya behind the wheel shouting into the darkness at invisible
threats of terrorism.

WE are currently at the head point of a time when America will soon be in a SUSTAINED war
effort against unknown enemies and the ambiguous "hunch" that we "might be attacked" at
any moment. How do you feel about going to the front lines based off a hunch? Guess what,
you might. Remember that lovely thing called the draft? Well it might be coming back as soon
as next year, with the age range going from 18-25 to 18-34. Men AND women.

Of course, http://www.sss.gov states that there is no draft, but their own timetables show
that the government will be ready to (if the need arises) by as early as June 15th 2005. As
they state, this is nothing new, but considering that the white house is already pulling IRR
(individual ready reserve) members back into active duty to meet the demand for fresh meat
in Iraq does a draft seems that far off? Besides, aren’t we still occupying Afghanistan too?

Kind of makes me want to expatriate. Or revolt.

P.S. Wouldn't it be funny if bush wins by more votes than there are people in the world?
Might actually get this stuff the media attention it deserves..