HACKING DEMOCRACY - Some people never exercise their right to vote. Some vote in every election despite hardships or inconveniences. People have pretty strong opinions about voters and non voters. Up until recently, I believed if you didn’t vote your opinion on political matters was worthless. I wouldn’t waste one iota of my time listening to someone commiserating over the state of the world if they hadn’t voted.
The subject of books and studies, voter motivation has been scrutinized from every angle. Voters may be discouraged by a number of obstacles, beginning with the voter registration process. Annual registrations, office hours, language barriers, literacy tests, and early cut off dates, all become hurdles for the reluctant voter who may be willing to procrastinate.
Education, income, and age, are indicators of how likely someone is to vote. But mobility, race, and where you reside can be a factor as well. Married people vote more than singles, and so do people who are engaged in civic organizations.
The historical factor of “voter apathy” is more than a diagnosis. It is an indictment of the political system. The propositions reoccurring theme of taxation and bonds, the revolving door that spins out the same candidates for decades, the massive failure of government resolving issues, the perpetual taxation that enslaves its citizenry while waste and fraud is rampant, are all sufficient reasons to stop short of the voting booth.
But the biggest factor, by far, is the paranoia that each election outcome has already been predetermined. That the fix is in, before the ink has dried on the candidate filing form. Is this rational or are they paranoid?
After watching the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy, I came to a new conclusion. My vote is being hijacked!
Nominated in 2007 for an EMMY in the category of “Outstanding Investigative Journalism”, the documentary focuses on how Bev Harris, a writer and publicist, uncovers the massive failure of electronic voting. Her discovery catapults her into the middle of a contentious battle with election manufacturing and software companies, Diebold and Global Election Systems.
Government officials are hiding their heads in the sand on this important issue and if voters value their vote, they better focus more on how the election process is flawed than on who they believe should win the election.
Bev Harris did not have prior knowledge of election systems, or computer programming, when she stumbled upon several disturbing facts. Her county had just purchased the new touch screen voting system and she wanted to research it. She entered into the search engine three words … Voting Machine Glitch … and pressed the key enter. A litany of complaints scrolled across the screen.
Harris found more than miscounts. She found Diebold Election Systems old website page, which lead her to their library, which lead her to file after file on their entire system, including the Gems software CODE. It took Bev 40 hours to download the information. She had the codes, the passwords in some cases, and all the secret and sensitive information for the Diebold Election Systems program. All of it was on the open internet on the FTP site. This information was used to count over 40% of America’s votes.
Very few people knew how election votes were counted. This changed after Bev became a bona fide activist, and her team of sleuths revealed how easy it was to tamper with elections that used Diebold systems. All the while Diebold denied Bev’s assertions.
Avi Rubin, Technical Director for Information Security Institute, analyzed the code for Bev Harris, and found that it was easy to hack into Diebold systems and change vote counts, without even knowing how the system worked.
The documentary follows the tenacious activists as they dumpster dive at various election facilities and come up with the election slips that show the final tally of each touch screen. These are legally required to be saved for a year after the election.
Eventually she proves without a doubt that the system can be hacked by changing a few numbers in the code, and that changing the code at one location, changed the end results. She started her organization called blackboxvoting.org to change how vulnerable our elections are.
The head of Argonne National Laboratory's Vulnerability Assessment Team, Roger Johnston, recently demonstrated how a Sequoia touch screen e-voting machine could be manipulated using components that cost about $25.00 and takes very little expertise.
Argonne researchers showed how a Diebold Accuvote TS touch screen voting machine can be compromised. Simply inserting a man-in-the middle electronic component to intercept the vote cast by a voter, you could change it before it is recorded by the system.
Anyone can buy an electronic hacking tool. It consists of a $1.29 microprocessor, an $8 circuit board and a $15 remote control. You can modify votes from up to a half-mile away.
Several states, including Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey and South Carolina currently use DREs without auditable paper trails, according to election watchdog Verified Voting. A paper trail is necessary so if questions arise, we can determine if fraud occurred.
We cannot allow the current system to remain, with out independent checks and balances.
Recounts involve only a small sampling of votes, not a full recount. The current 3% sampling is as problematic as the first count, as the documentary shows.
With Elections around the corner, and so much on the table to lose, making sure our elections are secure is the highest priority of every American. It’s time to insist on a new system, with an independent party verifying vote counts.
(Lisa Cerda is a contributor to CityWatch, a community activist, Chair of Tarzana Residents Against Poorly Planned Development, and former Tarzana Neighborhood Council board member.) –cw
Tags: Lisa Cerda, voting, elections, election fraud, electronic voting, election systems, hacking elections, hacking democracy
CityWatch
Vol 10 issue 44
Pub: June 1, 2012