While we have, for more than a decade, covered the extreme vulnerabilities of voting machines and electronic tabulators and broken numerous exclusive stories about it on both The BRAD BLOG and The BradCast, my guest on today’s show offers a number of additional ways — some of which had largely never even occurred — by which bad actors could disrupt U.S. elections.
Michael Gregg, IT security expert and COO of the private, Houston-based computer security firm, Superior Solutions wrote about some of those concerns recently at Huffington Post. He joins me today to discuss several of the ways that U.S. democracy could be disrupted by political hacktivists, election insiders or even foreign entities and how we might not ever even know about it if they did — thanks to the type of electronic voting systems we now use in all 50 states and the different ways in which the public is now being blocked from overseeing our own elections and election results.
“Attackers could potentially get in and do these things and it would be very hard to prove. The scary part is, by the time any of this is worked out, the election is over with, so it’s too late,” he tells me. I ask him how elected officials in his home state of Texas — much of which forces voters to use 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems — react when he points out these concerns. “We’ve brought that up multiple times, but that seems to be the powers that be, how they want to do things.”
Gregg, who I’ve never spoken to previously, concludes, as I have, that paper ballots (hand-marked and hand-counted, in my case) are the most secure way to run elections. “I agree with you 100%,” he says. “If you have a paper-based system, it’s very very hard to attack, it’s very much easier to be able to detect those types of things.”
As to Internet Voting, well, you’ll want to tune in for this computer security professional’s opinion on whether or not the Internet can ever be secure enough to use for the most important aspect of our representative democracy.
Also today: New York Times digs deeper still on their inaccurate Hillary Clinton reporting (as we covered in great detail on yesterday’s show); Incurious global warming trolls fall, once again, for the old “Earth is cooling” scam; The racist Charleston, SC church shooter pleads “not guilty”; And Shell Oil evades activists to try and begin drilling in the Arctic…
lets make sure HITLERY Clinton wins – right? ha ha
Press Release: Nobody for President of the united States of America 2016
http://deadlinelive.info/2015/0...-america-2016/
you should have us on your show? you have one right? You can call us racists! It’d be FUN!
Truly ~
Jack Blood
For for the juglar.
eVoting is, de facto, unconstitutional at the State and Federal levels. Without hardcopy accounting it can never be legal, at least not for decades to come when appropriate checks are in place – which may not happen if the US maintains its march to facism.
“If you have a paper-based system, it’s very very hard to attack, it’s very much easier to be able to detect those types of things.” I beg to differ. If nobody ever gets to look at the paper, those systems are very easy to attack. So, what to do? First, have a paper-based system. Second, COUNT the paper. Either all of it, or enough that you can know, on a scientific basis, that the machine’s numbers are accurate–which is to say, AT LEAST do a rigorous audit of the ballots. Just HAVING paper ballots is NOT enough.
Virginia @ #3,
You’re preaching to the choir, dahlin’.
The only way to beat a gerrymandered district is to hack it.
With something.
Like justice, fairness, and the American way.
So much for dinosaurs.
Thanks for advocating for free, fair, open, verifiable, and transparent elections. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is a dangerous Presidential candidate as:
1. At least 2 of the previous 3 elections he claims to have “won” in the last 4 years can be demonstrated to be stolen.
2. He has resources behind him to take this election fraud national
Now is the time to educate and inform the public — Scott Walker can, by hook or crook, be catapulted into the White House. This should (and does) alarm many and provides an opportunity to talk about election fraud in Wisconsin and across America.
Here are 2 short videos, links to downloadable/printable transcripts of each (.pdf), and links to 2 corresponding blog posts to learn more.
1. Recall the Recall Truth: Walker Stole That Election
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4Mm26ZBoWk
Blog post with sourcing/resourcing links:
http://wethepeopledanecounty.bl...rs-stolen.html
Transcript with graphics
http://madisonvoices.com/pdffil...Transcript.pdf
2. The Media & Scott Walker’s November 2014 Election Fraud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc0eU-3cpAk
Blog Post with sourcing/resourcing links:
http://wethepeopledanecounty.bl...mber-2014.html
Transcript with graphics
http://madisonvoices.com/pdffil...nFraud2014.pdf