Do you remember the news stories from last week, October 21, describing how a large portion of the Internet came crashing down because of hacker attacks? I do. Did you also read the story from four weeks ago, October 1, that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI reported sophisticated hackers were attacking numerous state voting systems, with the national elections right around the corner?
Perhaps you also remember the story from late September that numerous states were asking DHS for help in securing their systems against hack attacks. I was quite discouraged to read that story. The national elections were less than two months away, and states were just then getting around to taking hacking threats seriously?
Even with highly-authoritative reports like “Hacking Elections is Easy! Part 1: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures,” being released, concluding that “electronic voting systems are nothing but bare-bone, decade old computer systems that lack even rudimentary endpoint security,” many states have turned a deaf ear and blind eye to the realities of computer and Internet security. A Pennsylvania Department of State spokesperson said that the state feels confident that it can provide what is needed. The Georgia Secretary of State cited concerns about state sovereignty.
A few years back, while at the Defcon computer security conference in Las Vegas, I attended a meeting where the subject of “e-voting” was discussed. “E-voting (electronic voting)” means voting with computerized voting machines, as well as the idea of voting from an Internet website.
Several thousand of the world’s top computer security experts were in attendance. I thought it quite revealing that, as soon as the words “electronic voting security” came out of the speaker’s mouth, the crowd burst into raucous, jeering laughter. “E-voting security,” indeed.
You couldn’t fool this crowd; they knew better. That voters across the nation are being conned into thinking their electronically-cast votes are secure is a scam of colossal proportions. Worse still is the idea that public officials should be elected by people voting on the Internet. The potential for vote fraud is mind-boggling, as entire elections can be hijacked with the click of a mouse.
Here we are years later and things still have not significantly improved. Many of the latest electronic voting systems have no way of being independently audited, and the system manufacturers are not willing to reveal to election board officials how their computerized voting machines actually work. If the integrity of an e-voting machine is ever brought into question, well, too bad, you’ll just have to take their word for it.
Security experts have demonstrated time and again the countless ways that e-voting systems can be easily hacked and compromised; the potential for fraud is stunning, to say the least. Election board officials don’t know how e-voting machines are programmed, but guess who does know: the computer hacking underground, and their skills are for sale.
With the reality being that e-voting is a fundamentally flawed idea, it seems there could be no debate that it should be fixed or scrapped. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, government officials, business big-shots and political hacks keep supporting this bad idea, and seem determined to push it through to the ugly end, no matter what the cost. It makes me wonder, “Who are these people? Where did they come from? How did they get to be in charge? Why is it so hot around here and why are we all sitting in this handbasket?”