Jeezum Crow! Why do we even bother?

CHLORINE GAS TRANSPORTATION SAFETY
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Who cares! You're making mountains out of molehills here. It's not like someone can buy a tabulator, haul it into a polling station, and start going all willy-nilly on the voting results of an election. To do that, they'd need to connect to the network, and to do THAT means they'd have to get into a voting station with the hardware and do a bunch of jerry-rigging right there on election day. EVEN THEN, the votes that are cast would have some sort of code that corresponds to the device that captured the vote and so success would be contingent on bypassing and fooling a number of stopgaps and system checks to succeed. Maybe fodder for an Ocean's 21 Movie in the future, but not so much now. Sorry, Charlie.

My sense is that a jurisdiction might buy it as a spare for a by-election. Or they might add it to their existing "fleet" that they would lease out to smaller communities. Or, they might just use the thing for training Deputies, testing ballots or other things - as a prop and nothing more. For it to actually be used in an election, the folks at ES&S have some kind of service level or whatever that warranties the devices and all that.

Oh, while we're on the topic of fearmongering, let's bring up the Y2K issue, too. Because there are still computers that have that, and it's a very real threat - so I hear.

Carry on.

O/T but too amazing not to share here: it appears that there's (at least) ONE relatively-sane Republican in Wisconsin!

Wisconsin Republican Legislator Tears Into His Own Party For Voter Suppression

http://thinkprogress.org...nator-voter-suppression/

The pseudonymous (for some reason) Cheezeballs said @ 3:

Who cares! You're making mountains out of molehills here.

Thanks for your thoughts, Cheeze. Unfortunately, it sounds like you either haven't read up on the actual dangers of e-voting systems (and the ones accompanied by having one for your own, which will allow you to accomplish quite a lot) or you have a reason to throw a blizzard of smoke in hopes of disinforming folks here for some reason.

Unfortunately, I've got to get to the radio station right now to talk about this (and other things) on air, so I can't respond point by point. But there's plenty of info out there if you'd like to educate yourself for now.

If, on the other hand, you hope to disinform...well, in that case, no amount of actual science from scientists will persuade you to do otherwise, I suppose.

Brad,

Don't forget those machines purchased by the Princeton professors for something like $30 each from the government website! Others were purchased that cheaply also in Tennessee!

As far as anyone knows, these DREs are no longer being manufactured new. Pretty much all existing DRE voting machines are now very old, possibly failing, and possibly even worn out. But as Brad said, there are a huge number of counties and states out there still invested in using these dinosaurs. Instead of moving to a more verifiable form of voting, some of these counties might be looking to replace iVotronic machines or expand capacity as their population grows. Plenty of these counties might be looking at a $500 used machine being sold on eBay as a bargain when contrasted with spending $2000, $2500, or whatever more for an official refurb (but still used) unit directly from ES&S.

The scary thing is, whether it's a high priced refurb or an eBay bargain, the voters will still get a USED machine, meaning taxpayer dollars are being spent for an ancient computer that is probably at least eight or nine years old.

Sadly, Cheesballs apparently does not know enough about the ES&S system to know that "networks" are not exactly involved. Distinguished computer scientists have fully demonstrated attacks on iVotronic voting machines that could easily be done under the current methods of distribution and use. These attacks do not involve any network and some of these attacks use simple means and devices that are common and easy to obtain.

I am an elected local election official in Pennsylvania, in a jurisdiction where the county commissioners have chosen to use the ES&S iVotronic. As an election official I have to be constantly vigilant that one of these attacks is not occurring while voters are using the machines. I worry that someone could access and attack a unit while the machines are lying around our polling places after pre-election delivery or waiting for post-election pickup.

Security on electronic voting machines has always been a real problem (among many problems associated with this form of voting.) A DRE voting machine that falls into the wrong hands could be reverse engineered to create all kinds of mischief. And used, $500 eBay bargains are not going to improve the situation!

There are places where poll workers take machines home with them so they can set up polling places when the time comes. Nothing could go wrong with that, right?