An interesting electoral relevation

[jducoeur]

Thanks to jikharra for this link. The upshot is that it has now been clearly demonstrated that Diebold's fancy new voting machines are straightforward to hack if you have half a clue.

Some people claim that the 2004 election was stolen due by fraud: that the Diebold machines in some locations (specifically Ohio) were hacked to change the election numbers. This latest is no sort of evidence that that *did* happen, but does indicate that it quite plausibly *could* have happened, which is an important step in investigating the matter. It also indicates what sort of access was necessary in order to commit the fraud, which somewhat narrows the suspects if it did happen. It'll be interesting to see if this goes any further.

In general, it sounds like Diebold may be in serious trouble. Based on their record of the past few years (IMO, it is fundamentally unwise to use machines from a company that is explicitly biased towards one candidate), it couldn't happen to better people...

Comments

[antoniseb.livejournal.com]

This is one of the investigations that can't really happen until the democrats regain control of the congress and senate.

[tpau]

not to be picky, but isn't the senate part of congress?

[antoniseb.livejournal.com]

My understanding of the terminology is that Congress can refer to both the House of Representatives and the Senate (as in a joint session of Congress), but can also be applied to refer simply to the House of Representatives alone. Commonly, members of the House of Representatives are called 'Congressmen', while the members of the Senate are called 'Senators'. Also, states are divided into congressional districts, each of which elects one congressman. I think that you are technically correct, but that I am idiomatically correct.

[jducoeur]

Perhaps -- but it's ripe ground for some investigative reporting. To date, I don't get the impression that anyone has taken this accusation seriously; it would be interesting to see someone do so, and see what they find. There may be nothing there, but it's going to linger as a conspiracy theory until and unless it's explored.

And honestly -- Congress isn't going to take any action on this until and unless it's explored more from the outside. If someone finds actual evidence of tampering (rather than just speculation), *then* it's time to appoint an independent counsel to look into it; until then, Congress isn't going to produce anything other than wind. And frankly, if someone *does* find compelling evidence, an official investigation happen regardless of who's in charge of Congress -- it's too explosive to sit on, and a coverup will almost certainly cause more widespread damage than an investigation would.

So I don't really regard the political landscape in Congress to be the gating factor here...

[antoniseb.livejournal.com]

I expect hard evidence to be very hard to find, probably impossible without confessions. The system used in Ohio specifically did NOT have any checks or trail that would permit detection of fraud. I don't even think they had any kind of self consistancy check on data packets. The entire Ohio election could be a work of plausible fiction created by a fractal program and no one would know the difference.

[oakleaf-mirror.livejournal.com]

The General Accounting Office looked at the electronic voting situation at the request of Congress. As I read it, their report (pdf) says that some votes were lost and misappropriated to the wrong candidate, but the weakness of the systems currently in place means we'll never know how many, or if the election results were changed as a result. They recommend changes, but aren't hopeful that they'll be done by 2006.