California is restricting evoting
By estherlou
@estherlou (5015)
United States
August 5, 2007 10:17am CST
With the primaries coming soon, California has reviewed and decided not to allow e-voting at the polls, saying it is not reliable. " E-voting systems were used by between a quarter and a third of California's 8.9 million voters in last November's election, the secretary of state said. A "red team" of penetration testers found 15 security problems in the devices...researchers were able to exploit bugs in the Windows operating system...to circumvent the system's audit logs and directly access data on the machine. Testers were also able to overwrite firmware, bypass locks on the systems, forge voter cards, and even secretly install a wireless device on the back of a GEMS server." Bummer...I think e-voting is cool! I wish technology could become so safe that we could vote from our home computers!
2 people like this
6 responses
@redyellowblackdog (10629)
• United States
5 Aug 07
"I wish technology could become so safe that we could vote from our home computers!"
I wish technology was so safe we could vote directly on our computers for the laws congress and the senate write. Under this plan, our legislators would compose the bills much like their staffers do currently. Then we citizens would vote on them. Then the President would sign or veto it. Of course, any of our legislators will tell you how this is a bad idea.
As to electronic voting being unreliable and more easily subject to fraud, there have been articles in obscure places for years concerning this. They are right, too. Electronic voting has been fraught with corruption.
Ever seen raw assembly code? Without the proper assembler and lots of time almost no one can decipher it or know what it says. I have no doubt whatsoever that software engineers have placed "back doors" into various electronic voting machines.
1 person likes this
@estherlou (5015)
• United States
5 Aug 07
Voting on the laws congress and the senate writes directly from home would be very cool. That would leave the country in the hands of us computer geeks! LOL! Interesting thought. There was an update of the article. Some of the machines were reviewed and they are going to allow some electronic polls but has upped their securtiy.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135539-c,networksecurity/article.html
@whimsystoryteller (1743)
• United States
5 Aug 07
What would be nice is if we could watch Congress (both houses) in session and let our representatives know immediately what we are for and against and be able to know how many people (ordinary citizens) are in favor and how many are opposed to them and see whether or not the representative actually votes according to their constituents or based on some special interest group. If we could know that, I bet a lot of politicians would be more careful to vote on their constituents behalf because the constituents could see that they aren't being represented and vote those politicians out the next time around. Maybe then our nation would go back to being run by its people and not the political agendas of special groups.
@redyellowblackdog (10629)
• United States
5 Aug 07
Something else which would be neat is a national referendum on the order of what exists on the state level in California. That would be if enough of us sign a petition in favor of a certain law, it be placed on the ballot for a vote of the people. If it passes it becomes law. Not surprisingly, the majority of federal legislators oppose this.
@GardenGerty (160697)
• United States
6 Aug 07
I agree with you, this would be great and would probably triple the number of people who would actually vote in any given election. I know it would be much easier for me to plan for it, since I work two jobs. If I am at home, I would just as soon stay there. If I am out doing stuff and on my way to do stuff, I do not want to risk getting held up in line waiting to vote. I know that eventually it will come, it will be safe, it will be secure. Just wish it was now.
@whimsystoryteller (1743)
• United States
5 Aug 07
I think this is too scary because with all of the hackers out there, it would be too easy for some not so nice politician to hire someone to alter the voting. I think they need to stick to doing it at the polls and keep it off of online computers. Even if they figure out a system that is impenetrable for now, it won't take long before someone figures out how to get into the system. It's just too dangerous for our country's sake.
@teapotmommommerced (10359)
• United States
8 Aug 07
I wish they could get their act together with the voting and balots. I am from California and have not heard if our county is one that is mention. The last time we voted it was on paper but we insterted into a machine that counted our vote.
