Gizmodo Australia » voting

Voting Machines With Disappearing Logs Finally Under Investigation

Rosa Golijan — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:00:00 +0000

We knew how you could hack a voting machine, but California has discovered that some of its machines practically invite you to play. Machines made by Premier Election Solutions are finally under investigation for their faulty, omissive, easily alterable logs.

The centre of the investigation is the log design which allows “election official or someone else to delete votes without leaving an electronic trail”. But according to a previous statement by Justin Bales, general service manager of the company making the machines, it’s not so much a flaw in design as it is in planning:

We never . . . intended for any malicious intent and not to log certain activities,” Bales said. “It was just not in the initial program, but now we’re taking a serious look at that.

Whatever the cause or reason, at least new versions of the voting machines include more comprehensive logs as well as safeguards against alterations, but it’s about damn time the previous ones are being investigated. [Wired]

Estonia Will Be the First Country to Elect Politicians Using Mobile Phones

Jesus Diaz — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:20:00 +0000

Instant democracy is getting closer. In 2011, Estonians will be able to elect their representatives using mobile phones. How would it work and, more importantly, will it actually work?

Raul Kaidro, who is the spokesman of the SK Certification Centre in Estonia, says that it will be easy and secure: The voters will just need to previously obtain a free authorised chip. This chip will have an encrypted digital signature, which will allow them to identify themselves and vote using a text message.

The mobile voting will not be the only way to vote: It will be an additional method to online and on-site voting, all of them connected to a central database for instant identification and registration of the vote.

While some think digital voting will open a can of worms, it seems that this is not going to be the case. An independent security audit has certified that the process–which Sweden and Finland would eventually use as well–is completely secure and tamper-proof. In addition to that, their previous experience with online voting in 2007–which also used digital ID cards–was a success.

On the other side, if there is one thing history has shown to us is the fact that there’s no 100% secure system… but then again, look at what happens in the US with on-site machines. In other words, if someone wants to do something illegal, they would do it now–with on-site voting–and in the future–with online or mobile voting. I prefer the convenience of the later. [AP]

Voting Machines Coincidentally Elect Voting Machine as President

Mark Wilson — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:50:00 +0000

It’s amazing that you can fall asleep with the polls showing one thing and wake up to a world you don’t even recognise. Despite who I may have supported as of November 4th, as a fervent supporter of both democracy and touchscreen technology, I accept DRE 700:259 as the 44th President of the United States. But I’m totally using a paper ballet in 2012. [The Onion Thanks Mr. Ponies!]

Rube Goldberg Voting Machine Is Irreverent, Thankfully Irrelevant

Gizmodo US Edition — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:30:00 +0000

Well, the election is over! Luckily, it was pretty clear from about two hours in who would be the winner this time around , so even if there were a couple of iffy voting hijinks, it wouldn’t be anything to take up to the Supreme Court. Still, some post-election voting humour never hurt anybody – check out this Rube Goldberg machine by some kids over at the University of California Berkeley and feel relieved that, unlike in 2000, it’s easy this year to laugh about this kind of stuff. [Thanks Roland!]

Question of the Day: Do You Prefer a Paper Ballot or a Voting Machine?

Sean Fallon — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:00:00 +0000

When I went to vote this afternoon, I was kind of disappointed to find that my location was using paper ballots. Not that I have anything against that really—other than the waste of paper it is actually pretty hard to screw up as a voter (although, once my ballot was scanned I suppose anything can happen). I guess the gadget dork in me was just hoping for a touchscreen model—despite the potential reliability issues. So, I have a two part question for you: Which voting method would you prefer? Which did you actually use?

Results from “How Many Times Has Your Xbox 360 Gone Down With a RROD?“

0: 32%
1: 28%
2: 17%
3: 9%
4: 4%
More than 4: 11%

Astronauts Cast Votes From Space, But It’s Only One Regular Vote For Mankind

Adrian Covert — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:40:00 +0000

Astronauts Michael Fincke and Gregory Chamitoff did what only four other Astronauts have done in NASA’s 50 years when they voted today—from space. Thanks to a Texas bill passed in 1997, NASA space cases are able to legally vote while they’re out of the planet on business. But how did they cast their ballot from space, you ask? Here’s the answer that Space.com got.

Technically Astronaut voters cast an electronic Absentee ballot that is prepared by the County Clerk’s office in Harris and Brazoria counties. The secure document is then transferred to Mission Control at the Johnson Space Centre, while an email with login instructions is sent to the astronaut. The astronaut logs in, votes and beams the ballot back down to mission control. The completed ballot is then sent back to the Clerk’s office to be tallied. The first astronaut to do this was in 1997 when Michael Wolf voted from the Russian Space Station Mir and—OH MY GOD DID THOSE COMMIE RUSKIES GET TO WOLF AND HIS BALLOT AND CORRUPT OUR SACRED DEMOCRATIC PROCESS?! [Space.com via MSNBC]

How to Hack Voting Machines for Fun and Profit

Adam Frucci — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:30:00 +0000

Voting is great and everything, but wouldn’t it be awesome if you could make your vote count more than once? Or, even better, change other people’s votes to be for your candidate of choice? Well, good news, America! Now that we’re using poorly-designed and insecure electronic voting machines, you can do just that with some simple hacking! And thanks to some researchers at Princeton, anyone can be a voting machine hacker. Here, we’ll show you how!

The Princeton University Centre for Information Technology Policy has gone and published a report detailing the security vulnerabilities of the Sequoia e-voting machines and exactly how they hacked them. It turns out you just need to replace a single ROM chip, a process that takes about 7 minutes. Just tell the poll workers that you’re undecided and need to really think about it in the booth.

Even better? Once you install fraudulent firmware on one machine, it can virally spread itself to other machines, meaning you can commit widespread voter fraud across your entire state by just messing with one single machine. Isn’t that awesome! And it’ll keep propagating itself, effecting the next election as well, and the election after that.

Oh, and that fraudulent firmware? It’s a mere 122 lines of code and took them 2 days to write. They say that anyone with a computer science background could cook it up pretty easily.

America! Wooooooo hoo! [Ars Technica]

Democrats Still Most Tech Savvy, Rent Digital Billboard to Text Message Sarah Palin at Rally

Matt Buchanan — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:20:00 +0000

Need more evidence that Democrats are more grassroots tech savvy than their elephantine counterparts? At a Sarah Palin rally in LA on Saturday, the California Democratic party rented a digital billboard across the street which displayed questions for the veep candiate sent by text message. Granted, even if Palin did read them, she wouldn’t be able to recall which ones she read specifically. But still, quite awesome—I hope both parties get creative with tech like this, it’s a fantastic way to reach voters. [CA Dems via Online Video Watch via Textually]

Hacking a Voting Machine: Making Your Vote REALLY Count

Sean Fallon — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:45:00 +0000

After the Florida debacle a number of years ago, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are *gasp* vulnerabilities in the voting system. Take this hack of the Sequoia Voting kiosk for example. As you will see in the video, a trojan app can be easily installed via a USB key planted among a pool of keys used to initialise the system. While it is highly unlikely that a hack like this could be implemented in such a way that it has a major impact on an election, it is a frightening prospect nonetheless. [CrunchGear]

Ohio Voting Machines Lose Votes, Cannot Be Fixed Before Election Day

Matt Buchanan — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:30:00 +0000

The maker of the evil, wonky voting machines in Ohio that are going to be used for the election despite the fact they’re broken has admitted that the machines do in fact lose votes (before, Premier, aka Diebold, said it was “user error”). It gets better! They can’t be fixed before election day. Hey, it’s not like anyone asked for your opinion anyway. Okay maybe they did, but that’s beside the point, I think. [Columbus Dispatch via Slashdot]