Thursday, November 02, 2006

Is the Fix In - Again?

When Americans go to the polls next week, in some states upwards of four out of five of them will cast their ballot by electronic voting machines. These machines have found widespread acceptance despite test after test showing that they can be "hacked" quite easily and it will go undetected.

When this sort of problem is mentioned the name that usually comes up is Diebold, the leading maufacturer of electronic voting machines. Tonight, HBO will run "Hacking Democracy", a documentary about the pervasiveness and incredible vulnerabilities of these machines.

Diebold denies the problems but scientists commissioned by California to study the machines found that the key hacking complaints were true and also found 16-other vulnerabilities in the Diebold machines.

A machine we rarely hear about, produced by Sequoia Voting Systems, is even more laughable. With the Sequoia machines there's an easy way to vote more than once. You could even vote as many times as possible before you were physically restrained.

The Sequoia machines have a magic button, a reset button, set on the back. Vote then press that button and hold it down briefly and you get to vote again. Now pushing that button is supposed to sound a beep but it still needs monitors to keep a watchful eye - and ear - on the voter to be sure no one uses the button.

Isn't it curious that a country, that has suffered so much election chicanery over the past six years, should have such a love affair with these machines?

No comments: