Wednesday, December 20, 2006

disturbing segment on vote flipping

There's a disturbing clip from a documentary on Youtube. In it, a programmer alleges (in a sworn affidavit and later in sworn testimony before Congress) that, in October 2000, a congressman paid him to create software that would change the outcomes of specific elections that used electronic voting machines. The segment's from the documentary Eternal Vigilance: The Fight to Save Our Election System. If you don't want to install Flash 9, you can get more info about the clip in this Brad Blog entry. One factor that undercuts the credibility a bit is that the segment appears to have been released as part of a political campaign, but the technical bits are entirely consistent with my own knowledge of software engineering and generally consistent with what electronic security expert Bruce Schneier has been saying.

1 comment:

WEb said...

Yes, quite disturbing, but we did hear stories of fraud in the 2000 elections, so not surprising... Maybe a low-tech solution will be better for this application? When I voted last election, I used those ink dots, and couldn't think of anything easier, and one has a paper record.