Voting Machines Vulnerable To Hackers

A 1.8 million dollar study conducted by the University of California on behalf of Secretary of State Debra Bowen. This study "uncovered serious security flaws" in "three electronic voting systems certified for use in California."

The representatives of three voting machine companies (Diebold Elections Systems, Hart Intercivic and Sequoia Voting Systems) criticized the study, "saying it had reached unrealistic conclusions." Hart said it found "several inconsistencies, alternate conclusions and errors" in the report.

In one example, when testers used the Sequoia e-voting machine, they "were able to gain physical access to the system by removing screws to bypass locks." In another example, "testers were able to manipulate several components networked to the server, including loading wireless drivers onto the server that could then be used to access a wireless device plugged surreptitiously into the back of the server", when using Diebold's Windows operating system.

Although there is some problems that could be used against taking the results as a serious threat, the problems with the e-voting machines are too real to ignore. Although in many cases it might be difficult to change results, the fact of the matter is that there is a strong possibility for these machines to be used to alter results.

As Avi Rubin, professor of computer science and technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, told TechNewsWorld , that "I had expected them to find problems -- but to be able to replace firmware in all three systems is nothing short of an utter takeover of machines, and that shouldn't be possible." He went on to say that "What's even scarier is that the researchers were looking at certified systems that have been already used in an election."

When there is such glaring problems with these systems they should NOT be used in something as pivotal and a key to American democracy as voting. The machines should be pulled from service until a clear fix can be found for the MANY problems in the current electronic voting machines.