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posted by chromas on Thursday November 15 2018, @12:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ dept.

I Bought Used Voting Machines on eBay for $100 Apiece. What I Found Was Alarming

In 2016, I bought two voting machines online for less than $100 apiece. I didn't even have to search the dark web. I found them on eBay.

Surely, I thought, these machines would have strict guidelines for lifecycle control like other sensitive equipment, like medical devices. I was wrong. I was able to purchase a pair of direct-recording electronic voting machines and have them delivered to my home in just a few days. I did this again just a few months ago. Alarmingly, they are still available to buy online.

If getting voting machines delivered to my door was shockingly easy, getting inside them proved to be simpler still. The tamper-proof screws didn't work, all the computing equipment was still intact, and the hard drives had not been wiped. The information I found on the drives, including candidates, precincts, and the number of votes cast on the machine, were not encrypted. Worse, the "Property Of" government labels were still attached, meaning someone had sold government property filled with voter information and location data online, at a low cost, with no consequences. It would be the equivalent of buying a surplus police car with the logos still on it.

[...] I reverse-engineered the machines to understand how they could be manipulated. After removing the internal hard drive, I was able to access the file structure and operating system. Since the machines were not wiped after they were used in the 2012 presidential election, I got a great deal of insight into how the machines store the votes that were cast on them. Within hours, I was able to change the candidates' names to be that of anyone I wanted. When the machine printed out the official record for the votes that were cast, it showed that the candidate's name I invented had received the most votes on that particular machine.

This year, I bought two more machines to see if security had improved. To my dismay, I discovered that the newer model machines—those that were used in the 2016 election—are running Windows CE and have USB ports, along with other components, that make them even easier to exploit than the older ones. Our voting machines, billed as "next generation," and still in use today, are worse than they were before—dispersed, disorganized, and susceptible to manipulation.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by datapharmer on Thursday November 15 2018, @02:57PM (1 child)

    by datapharmer (2702) on Thursday November 15 2018, @02:57PM (#762177)

    Can you please point me to a reputable source that shows they are "finding" votes? This seems to be totally false information - provisional ballots that were simply not counted initially is not "finding" anything. Provisional ballots are never counted on election night. "A provisional ballot is voted the same as a regular ballot; however, after the voter marks his or her selections, the ballot is sealed in a certificate envelope instead of being fed into the tabulating machine... A voter may also present written evidence of eligibility to the Supervisor of Elections by 5 PM on the second day after the election... After the period has passed for voters to provide supporting documentation, the provisional ballot certificates are individually examined to determine the voter's eligibility. The county canvassing board reviews voter eligibility status and determines whether the provisional ballot should be counted. The vote totals from the ballots that are determined to be eligible to be counted are then obtained and added to the totals from election night. Ballots that are determined to be ineligible to be counted remain sealed in their certificate envelopes, and the envelopes are marked "rejected." Source: https://www.votebrevard.com/election-information/provisional-ballots [votebrevard.com]

    You simply see more provisional ballots in areas with higher poverty and immigration as statistically these people are less likely to have a current valid government id for various reasons (but doesn't mean they are ineligible to vote) and there are more in heavily populated areas (even if the overall percentages are the same) which can create the appearance of more sway than there actually is statistically. This has only been a problem recently as voter ID laws have been added to deter minority voting (knowing they are less likely to carry valid ID, especially when the definition of valid ID keeps changing). See North Dakota example (surely nobody thinks that Native Americans are illegal immigrants trying to vote... right) Example: http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/10/23/north-dakota-voter-id-law-native-americans [wbur.org] it is a clear case of voter suppression - add ID requirement, voters get ID, change address requirement, voters must get different addresses and new IDs, rinse, repeat.

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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday November 16 2018, @02:42AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 16 2018, @02:42AM (#762482) Journal

    You are exposing your racist views with that post. Black folk aren't stupid, after all. Or, more accurately, some of them are - in about the same proportions that white folk are stupid.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JGmKHrWKMQ [youtube.com]