...an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities — a voting-machine virus.The site BlackBoxVoting.org has published an entire book about the ridiculous vulnerabilities of Diebold voting machines, which lack even the most basic protections of ATM machines made by the same company! In this post, they even show you how easy it is to remove the memory card used for storing ballots and alter it in an almost untraceable way!
I'm waiting for the American people to wake up and realize that the groundwork is being laid for wholesale tampering with, or even stealing of elections in the USA! All it will take is a few corrupt voting officials in key counties or states, or even a virus released by hackers, political zealots, or worse!
Computer nerds have a special role to play in this: we need to warn the general public about the limits of technology, and against blind faith in computerized voting. I'm not opposed to automated ballot counting, but it MUST be accompanied by strict security and complete auditability, or else the new voting systems will not be an improvement, but rather a large setback to the cause of democracy.
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