Slashdot Log In
How to Hack the Vote and Steal the Election
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Oct 26, 2006 11:06 AM
from the vote-early-vote-often dept.
from the vote-early-vote-often dept.
divisionbyzero writes "Many people have asked for it so that the government will have to deal with it. So here it is: a guide to stealing an election that uses electronic voting machines written by Jon Stokes over at Arstechnica.
From the article:
"In all this time, I've yet to find a good way to convey to the non-technical public how well and truly screwed up we presently are, six years after the Florida recount. So now it's time to hit the panic button: In this article, I'm going to show you how to steal an election.""
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Lack of ethics (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
When people give a shit more about some gays marrying in NJ than they do about genocide in Darfur, military and civilian deaths in Iraq & Afghanistan, and people dying in this country due to being priced out of receiving their necessary meds, we have become a country that has lost focus on things that *actually matter*.
That being said, I'm not optimistic anyone that's in my camp has the guts to steal an election, we'd rather give it away. Liberal media my ass... I wish!
Parent
You skirted the main issue! (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless we have a real free press, with real media outlets (read: TV, radio, internet, magazine, newspaper, etc.), then we don't have a democracy.
Personally, after watching 911mysteries and other films on related topics, and reviewing the scientific facts for myself, I'm convinced that we already live in 1984, and the only solution is the bloody ugly one that Thomas Jefferson and most of our other founding fathers completely supported.
You did mention the "liberal" media, so you touched on it, but really, when 3 channels are quoting each other with created facts by obvious pundits who are clearly party members.....
You don't have freedom of the press anymore, and it's game over for democracy.
It's been that way since Kennedy got whacked, and on a related issue, that was also our last real election.
rhY
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:4, Insightful)
Mass murder, loss of life due to partial failure of socio-economic systems in some classes, war and chaos are all private matters of concern now? Don't know why I should have to actually say this at risk of karma, but a if a few guys screwing each other in NJ with matrimonial ambitions - if they are more important to us than the above issues, then maybe we have lost a lot more than just "focus".
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:4, Insightful)
So we shouldn't build roads, fund museums, build schools, create wildlife sanctuaries, and so on. All of our cash should go to immediate life-saving projects.
OH, and for the record, while I'm not in either "camp" and don't give a squat about the sexual practices of NJ males, it was never really about that. It's all about the money (government benefits to spouses), and it always is. Both sides put a bunch of nonsense up on the airways and refuse to talk about what matters in grownup land - how much does it cost.
Personally, I think government should get out of the marriage promotion business altogether and just concern itself with guardianship laws and contract law. But hey, now both sides can target me for not caring.
-Jeff
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:4, Insightful)
But the whole point of what the Christians want is to be able to reward people they like (i.e. themselves) and punish people they do not like (i.e. fags). So, taking away their special privledges to put them on a level field does not accomplish this. Giving gays the right to marry does not accomplish this. What they want is the government to send checks to Christians and put the fags in jail. Because, you see, Christians are so "loving".
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:4, Insightful)
"It is also a fact that owning a Hummer is a big financial burden on people that those without Hummers don't have, and they can use some help."
See how ridiculous that sounds? People have choice on whether or not to breed, as do they have a choice to own a Hummer. I don't feel pity for the financially strapped family in either camp.
(posting from Utah, where 5+ kids is too damn common for my comfort)
Parent
Re:children, retirement, and population (Score:5, Interesting)
" China and India, the two most populus countries in the world, had high population growth, but now that their economy has dramatically improved their birth rates are dropping."
Do you actually have a reference to support this or did you pluck it out of your....
Amoung others Foreign Policy magazine [foreignpolicy.com] had an article on this. Unfortunately as their online archives is subscription based and I don't have a subscription I can't provide a link. I have to admit though you pointed out something I left out about China, that China has a one child one couple policy. And while rural areas don't directly feel the economic boom in China more and more people are moving from the countryside to cities. Wish I could find one article from "Foreign Policy" but they had an article on one of the fastest growing cities in central China that said thousands of Chinese are moving to every day. This releases some of the economic pressure on rural areas. As for India, farmers are experiencing hardships with many committing suicide. They don't have open access to the industrial nations such as the US and EU, and the US and EU can import into India agricultural products relatively cheaply. That's a big reason the WTO meetings failed in Europe this summer. Because the EU wouldn't talk about opening their markets to imports and the massive subsidies the EU gives to farmers the Indian representative walked out.
If China and India weren't benefitting from an economic boom then neither would be able to finance the US national debt, and China and India are the biggest buyers of US Treasury bonds and notes respectively.
FalconParent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, I, personally, don't believe that to be a logical viewpoint, but there are others out there who do.
If people really wanted to defend marriage, they'd outlaw divorce.
Also, when people pull out the "damage the institution of marriage" I usually ask them
how exactly the damage occurs, because honestly I don't see how gay people getting
married affects the marriages of straight people.
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, you still left off the words "to me". The genocide in the Sudan is unlikely to affect the majority of the voters - in any country - regardless of the eventual outcome, hence it continues, to the tune of millions dead even - but what's a few million dead people - over 60% (2.5 million or so) of the Montagard tribe of Vietnam was exterminated after the peace loving Americans forced the US military to cut and run from Vietnam - but hey, they ended the war, eh. The situation in Iraq, etc., due to the rise of terrorism, the importance and quantity of oil, the historical and stated intent of the ruling elite (as we watch Iran pontificate now), and even the historical influence of the Ottoman peninsula, affects many people, and hence the interest. It's "easy" to liberate a Grenada, except for the shitstorm of "unbiased" press reports afterwards, but not so easy in Haiti, for example, nor in Iraq - but Iraq has much more influence, whether for or against, because of location, etc., to the US, and so is important.
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:5, Funny)
And if they get away with it, honestly, is that really so bad?
DATELINE: January 27, 2009 - President Stallman and GNUHSEC announces arrest of Redmond, WA voting-machine hackers.
President Stallman today announced the disruption of a terrorist plot, allegedly involving electoral fraud originating from a the terrorist organizations known as the Red Mond Alliance and the Darlings of McBride, both of which owe allegiance to a shadowy figure known only as the Monkey of the Thrown Chair.
"Let the elections of 2008 stand as a warning to all who would attempt to defraud the American public", warned Vice President Eric Raymond. "The GNUTIA (Gnu's Not Total Information Awareness) surveillance programme is fully operational, and GNUHSEC (Gnu's Not Homeland Security) agents will not tolerate any future incidents of voter fraud."
Parent
He's crafty, that Stallman. (Score:5, Funny)
Stallman wouldn't want to execute Raymond too early; it would just precipitate a civil war. You know, BSDers blowing themselves up in LUG meetings, contamination of the Cheetos supply, and caffeinated-beverage shortages. You know, basically all the worst parts of the Bible.
Parent
Ethics? We don't need no stinking ETHICS! (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be a virtual repeat of the 2002 and 2004 elections. You see, all this nail-biting, down to the wire, razor-thin margin bullshit gives the idiots who watch TV the feeling that, well "it MUST be legit because it was so darn close" and "if there was anything crooked going on, they'd win decisively".
Wednesday, the 8th of November, we will hear how the "values voters" pulled together at the last minute and despite the fact that all the exit polls showed the Dems winning by a huge margin, the Republicans yet again pulled a miracle out of the hat and retained power. Rush Limbaugh will explain that all the prayers of the good Christian Conservatives is what turned the tide.
Because of the clear crookedness of our electoral system (and did you notice that the regions that the Republicans pulled their upsets in during the last elections were the ones that had Diebold machines?), it is probably too late to expect elections, op-ed columns or clever blogs to make a damn bit of difference.
No, I'm afraid it's going to take people, lots of people, in the streets, being decidedly ill-behaved if we're going to keep this nation anything like the beautiful experiment that the Founding Fathers produced. If the principles of the Enlightenment are going to survive, we're going to have to act the way the heroes who created this country acted: badly. Civil disobedience and mass demonstrations, general strikes and boycotts. There's going to be some fighting before this power-grab by the Authoritarian Right who have masked themselves as "Conservatives" will end.
Despite my general laziness and particular enjoyment of online games like Eve-Online, I am prepared to fight, and if necessary, die, for my country. Even if it means that it will be other Americans that I will have to fight to protect the United States of America.
It's going to take a tamper-proof margin of victory in 11 days if this sleazy little tin-pot dictator in the White House and the crooked pricks who are pulling his strings are going to be stopped. It's the only chance we have to put a little oversight on these bad actors.
Parent
Re:Ethics? We don't need no stinking ETHICS! (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
You're joking? The people with the motivation to rig the election are the main parties. They're also best placed to get away with it. Who are these "terrorists" that would want to rig the results? As far as a group like Al Quaeda (who I presume you're thinking of here), both the main parties are pretty much identical. They are, after all, funded by the same players and neither has shown much compassion to the people of Saudi Arabia in living memory.
Terrorists want attention and to make a statement. Rigging an election is something that has limited benefit once it is publically known. If an election is or has been rigged, you'll find the culprits much closer to home.
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:But what about (Score:4, Insightful)
If Hannibal can do this then someone who wanted to steal an election, and could spend a trivial amount of money on doing it could absolutely do the same. It is utterly absurd to think that the analysis he did in the course of researching and writing a single article couldn't be done (and probably was done a long time ago) by any one of hundreds of other organizations if they had a small team working on it for months or years.
The result? The only people for who this is news are the people who don't have a vested interest in stealing an election - and those are the people who need to know about it. Bravo to my favourite tech site for doing this.
Parent
Re:But what about (Score:5, Informative)
There are many Slashdot readers who could get up to speed on how to really steal an election in about half a day (or less) using publicly available documentation. The hardware isn't that complex at all, and the vulnerabilities in Windows (for the GEMS server) and WinCE (for the machine) are very well-known.
What I've described here is very, very low-hanging fruit for anyone with real security expertise.
Parent
Well (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
People have given sworn testimony in court about the security issues and how their concerns fell on deaf ears in upper management, or sometimes even met with legal threats and unemployment.
Quite simply, proper channels HAVE been exhausted. Either nobody gets it or they are deliberately trying not to hear it.
=Smidge=
Parent
Re:Lack of ethics (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct. As a firearm owner, I know what harm firearms can cause - killings, accidental shootings, property damage, etc. And so, I demand an immediate crackdown on publically accessible repair manuals, to ensure a brighter tomorrow.
Correct. As a driver, I know what harm poor driving can cause - vehicular homicide, property damage, etc. And so, I demand an immediate crackdown on access to automobiles, driving instruction literature, etc., to ensure a brighter tomorrow.
Congressmen should maintain an exemption to all of the above, to ensure they can oversee said systems, and protect the workings of our great society. Public oversight should not be necessary, as I have full trust in the state.
Parent
Security Through Obscurity (Score:5, Interesting)
(c/o Matt Blaze [crypto.com])
Parent
In two easy steps ... (Score:5, Insightful)
2. There is no step two
Re:In two easy steps ... (Score:5, Informative)
If you're not convinced the election has been stolen, check out this excerpt from an article by McNeills:
Parent
Re:In two easy steps ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in Ohio in 2004, Ken Blackwell was the Secretary of State, who is in charge of running the elections. He was also the head of Bush/Cheney re-election campaign in Ohio. This is was a conflict of interest. He should have stepped down from one position or the other.
Similarly, if an executive of a company that makes voting machines is giving speeches in support of a candidate, or writing in a fund-raising letter stating that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year," [commondreams.org], that is a conflict of interest. Either work for the company, or work for a candidate/party. Go ahead and vote. But don't campaign or participate in fund-raising events. To do make voting machines and actively campaign for a candidate or party is a conflict of interest.
The problem is that when a private company is making voting machines, there is no built-in parity of the system. With the old paper ballot system, representatives from *both* parties were physically present during the voting and the counting, to provide oversight. In the case of black-box machines controlled by a private corporation, they do not have to have representatives from both parties witness the development and implementation of the machines. This will lead to fraud and corruption.
Parent
German Petition against voting machines (Score:5, Interesting)
http://itc.napier.ac.uk/e-Petition/bundestag/view
It currently has 13748 votes.
Thanks!
Re:German Petition against voting machines (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Are you the RIAA? (Score:5, Funny)
-- The Diebold P2P Network Team
Re:Are you the RIAA? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of slashdotters who would argue both those ways without seeing a conflict.
It's like the iraqi they had on NPR last night.
A) He wants americans killed and he wants the shiite militia to do it.
B) He wants the americans to stay and protect him from the suni's.
he sees *NO* conflict in these two positions.
Parent
Vote from orbit (Score:5, Funny)
CowboyNeal for President (Score:5, Funny)
Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since you cannot validate the correctness of the election either way, I'd opt for the path which fixes the situation.
Motivation (Score:5, Insightful)
If you really want election reform you have to make it in the best interest of the the Dem/Rep party. The best way to do that would be to have a third party victory. As long as someone in the Professional Politicians Club get's elected, the powers that be don't care about voting accuracy. They have no reason to.
Parent
Been done already (Score:4, Informative)
From the referenced url: '"Electronic voting machines also caused widespread problems in Florida, where Bush bested Kerry by 381,000 votes. When statistical experts from the University of California examined the state's official tally, they discovered a disturbing pattern: "The data show with 99.0 percent certainty that a county's use of electronic voting is associated with a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush. Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004."'
'Charles Stewart III, an MIT professor who specializes in voter behavior and methodology, was initially skeptical of the study - but was unable to find any flaw in the results. "You can't break it - I've tried," he told The Washington Post. "There's something funky in the results from the electronic-machine Democratic counties."'
Here's hoping (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news (Score:4, Funny)
You can buy them from Diebold (Score:5, Informative)
Unbelieveably, Diebold actually has an ecommerce site where you can buy all their electronic voting machine products online, including memory cards, security tape, and access keys. I'm really hoping they verify that you're an elections official before they actually ship the stuff to you:
http://www.diebold.com/nasadmk/cgi-bin/desi_cata log.pl?section=9
Here you go - buy a dozen keys, for you and your friends:
http://www.diebold.com/nasadmk/cgi-bin/desi_cata log.pl?section=9&id=163
On a funny/sad note, the front page of their election products site as a glaring coding error (%=rs("newsdate")%):
http://www.diebold.com/dieboldes/
Parent
too complicated (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideally, for the layperson you would simply explain that each pricinct's votes are stored in a small database, and that it can simply be edited with a piece of software commonly included in Microsoft's popular Office suite. Then, show a screenshot of access with the GEMS database opened, highlight the vote tally for some candidate, and explain that you simply click in the box and change the number. Then explain how it would be impossible to know what the vote count could be due to the lack of paper...relate it back to punched ballots (just save the ballots and recount em if necessary), optical scanners (again you have the ballots and usually there is a paper log that prints each vote as it is scanned), etc.
All of that is understandable to even the layperson. Most people understand what Microsoft Office is. Most people have heard of a database and understand thats how businesses store all their information. Most people have seen a spreadsheet and a screenshot of someone editing an access database looks almost the same.
Email this story to your representative (Score:5, Informative)
Repeat this process for http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information
After about a thousand folks do this, a staffer might actually go print out the story and hand it to their congresscritter in a brief.
I'd also like to ask the Ars Technica people to make an exception for this story and make the PDF available to non-subscribers, as it would really help to disseminate this story to the right people. I'm not really sure how to go about contacting them.
Here's my letter (slightly munged of course by slashdot):
What should be done. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What should be done. (Score:4, Insightful)
Statistical analysis has already demonstrated fraud in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. There is no doubt whatsoever that significant voting irregularities took place, and that they had the effect of giving the election to Bush rather than his opponent in both cases. There were also, it is worth noting, some anomalies that favoured Democrats, although not by so wide a margin (perhaps they were just playing their cards more closely, or didn't need as big shifts to win in those races.)
I sincerely hope that some American hero stands up and hacks the upcoming elections in a big way. They will get jailed for some kind of crime, but someone has to stand up and fight, and not say, "Oh, but my career would suffer if I was willing to sacrifice myself for the good of my country." But I have no illusions that such a successful hack would have any immediate effect. It will take many hacks over many elections to convince the idiots who think that election fraud is simply a stick to beat Republicans with, or who dismiss all evidence of fraud as impossible because "they" would never allow such a thing.
We know Diebold machines can be hacked very easily. We know that they have been hacked in past elections, based on analysis of exit poll anomalies. We know that there is a great deal at stake in the American elections in the next two years.
If America deserves to survive, there will be at least one person somewhere who is even now implementing a plan that will result in 100% of the votes cast in their county going to third-party candidates. In practical terms it must be third-party, because otherwise the vast majority of voters who cast their ballot for the favoured candidate would simply shrug, spit, and say, "I don't see no problem with that." Nothing short of a third-party landslide victory will put a dent in the partisan complacency of mainstream voters, and even then the lying bastards in power will claim that this was a special-case problem that they know for sure didn't affect any other races. And the complacent sheeple will believe them.
If no one is willing to take the risk of throwing egregiously throwing the vote in their county then America does not deserve to survive as a functioning democratic republic, and it will not.
Parent
Self-Verified Voting (Score:4, Insightful)
To begin with, the regular voter verification process happens at the door. You go into the polling booth, select all your options, and a confirmation screen comes up for you to check and make sure you selected everything properly. When you confirm, a small piece of paper is printed out that has a serial number and a dynamically generated decryption key on it. Your vote is then sent along to a tabulation server. Your unencrypted vote is added up with the other votes, and the pair of your serial number and your encrypted vote is stored at the same time.
Later in the day, you can go home, and log onto a special government website. You enter your serial number, along with your decryption key, and the verification server shows your vote back to you. The only identifier attached to each vote is a serial number, and it requires the proper decryption key to view the vote. Nevertheless, it allows individual voters to check to make sure that their vote was counted. As long as source-code can be publicly inspected, we can verify that counting is not being "faked" by saving an individual user's vote for verification purposes but not actually adding it to the overall tabulation, thus preventing fraud by under-voting.
To prevent fraud by over-voting, the tabulation server will keep track of the total number of votes it receives from each machine. Local election officials will keep a hand-tally of the number of voters who visit each poll. At the end of the day, the hand tally is checked against the server's tally to make sure there is no discrepancy.
Re:Premium access ? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Know Where To Look (Score:4, Informative)
Why? To win a state and the state's electoral votes (in a presidential race).
In the US, the president is elected by the Electoral College. Each state sends a certain number of "Electors" to the Electoral College to cast their vote's for that state's winning candidate. So on a state-by-state basis, it's a winner-take-all system. So you want to change outcomes in counties in order to win a whole state. Here's a way to cheat with the above system (minimizing chances of getting caught):
1. Pick a populous state with a close election like Ohio or Florida or several others.
2. Adjust the vote for your candidate up by 5 or 10% in counties where you expect him to win. This increases the overall statewide vote for your candidate. Enough, you hope, to push your candidate over the top.
3. Your candidate wins the state, gets those electors, and wins the Electoral College vote.
4. Profit.
Parent
Re:Liberal Vote Counting Procedure (Score:5, Insightful)
The influence of the provably biased media on elections as they are occurring should be a shameful thing to us and disallowed. I know people who were standing in (a long) line in Florida and heard it'd been called for Gore and so didn't bother to vote (for either candidate) after that - talk about sanctioned disenfranchising.
Parent
Re:How quaint. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The presumption is that voting matters (Score:5, Insightful)
Would we be at war in Iraq? No.
Would we be running up record deficits? Probably not.
Would we have slashed public services to provide tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans? Hardly.
Would we be torturing people in secret prisons?
Would September 11th have been pumped up into justification for a global war against 'Islamofascism?'
Yes, both sides are pretty deep in the pockets of corporations. Both sides are often self-serving at the expense of both their stated ideals and the good of the country. Neither side is offering up solutions that really satisfy me. But to say there is "no difference" is just whiny, and promotes the sort of apathy that corrupt systems thrive on.
Parent