If the GOP can, in the course of selecting their own Presidential nominee, use a fictional TV show to highlight dangers, real or imagined, that face America, so can we point to a fictional networkwide election hacking scenario as recently seen on a popular TV show. Fictionalized or otherwise, the premise behind this TV hack is based on a real and documented vulnerability of electronic voting machines and underscores the dangers they pose to American democracy.
The following compilation of a few scenes from last week’s HEROES on NBC demonstrates a very real scenario: the ability of a single person to hack an election via inappropriate access to a voting machine — the type of access regularly granted to election officials, voting machine company employees, and poll workers allowed to take voting machines home for “sleepovers” prior to elections.
While the inappropriate access by this particular person in the following clip is obviously a fantasy, the premise underscoring the scenario is anything but — at least if you’re one of those reality-based folks who still believe in the expertise of scientists, peer-reviewed university studies and reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), etc.
Enjoy…
(Thanks to Alan Breslauer for the smart edit, and to BRAD BLOG emailer and HEROES fan, Corey K. for the heads up!)
Rep. Rush Holt D-NJ
So corny – – – thanks for posting! Thought you’d be interested in this – NYTimes editorial page today, in the letters, this Representative is accepting his pat on the back for legislation he’s sponsoring to make it a law that machines provide a paper ballot.
Obviously he’s far behind the 8-ball…we’ve got to target this guy and get word to him that his draft needs to be reworked!
What makes us think they won’t somehow hijack this new immigration legislation to somehow disrupt voting, like they did to HAVA? The old, “How can we hijack this upcoming legislation that everyone seems to agree on, to our benefit?”
As a person whose job it is to test and try to hack electronic voting devices, I can tell you that any such scenario is complete fantasy. There is no secret access codes for election officials or industry insiders to “change votes” as you are suggesting in your article; furthermore voting machines are not networked in mass. Frankly, this is just paranoid, consiracy theory thinking.
Unfortunately, almost nobody watches NBC. Unless this is picked up by a news organization for a 60 Minutes presentation, its value will be minimal.
If you ask me, this show is planting the seed in millions of viewers minds that electronic vote stealing is some wild fantasy, which couldn’t be further from the truth! Since the “Greedy Old Perverts” flat out own the airwaves that most people watch, their programing is doing the thinking for their viewers. John Prine was right “Blow up your tv”, unless your watching Link or Direct TV with Democracy Now!
I’d sure like to have been a fly on KKKarl Rove’s “bat cave” wall the night of the 2004 election in the wee hours when Kerry was ahead in Ohio and KKKarl announced he was going to his “bat cave.” Then mysteriously idiotboy pulled ahead much to the surprise of the news announcers. Sure seems like the routing of the election tabulation through the RNC affiliated center in Tennessee could have easily been connected to the “bat cave.” The truth isn’t stranger than fiction!
http://www.nowpublic.com/gop_cy..._squad_exposed
Sorry, here’s the link again:
http://www.nowpublic.com/gops_c..._squad_exposed
Oh yeah Dub #5, scroll down and then read Fitrakis and Harvey’s detailed comment!
Dub said –
If you are, as you claim, a person whose job it is to test and hack voting devices (which I welcome you to validate, since nobody in America that I know of has such a job, at least until Debra Bowen’s new “top to bottom review committee was convened) then in fact, you know the above is false, and has been proven so time and again.
From the Princeton Diebold Virus Hack, to the discovery of a similar vulnerability by FSU in ES&S touch-screen systems, to the Hursti II report out of Emery County, UT, to NYU’s Brennan Center to several GAO reports, it has been confirmed over and again, that a single person can flip an entire election undetectably with inappropriate access to a voting machine or a memory card.
That you claim it to be a “fantasy” or a “conspiracy” leads me to believe that your claim of testing and/or hacking such machines for a living is similarly a “fantasy”. Feel free to authenticate yourself, and I’ll be happy to admit I’m wrong. Until then, your comment smells much like disinfo to me, given that your claims have already been proven to be wrong time and again.
But thanks for doing your best to try and confuse folks.
But,.. But,.. but,..
I did rigorously test the voting machines for hack-ability and everything since 1965, I’m an expert’s expert – I mentored/taught Bill Gates all he knows. My net-worth exceeds his by 10X – but I’m more frugal and less ostentatious about my holdings.
My name is Dub.
Keep in mind that there are several vendors out there who make electronic voting equipment. Some are more susceptible than others. For example, Diebold has its own onboard OS wherein the votes on that individual machine could be tampered with. Other systems require a voter to insert a card or chip to vote, which can also be tampered with – but only on that individual machine. Hart systems do not have an onboard OS and do not require anything to be inserted to cast a vote. While its not “bulletproof”, the eSlates are the best of them in my opinion. (No I do not work for Hart).
Keep in mind that the machines that were hacked were in a lab environment with a virtual think-tank working on the project.
As far as networking – many states have statutes and rules against electronic voting machines accessing the Internet directly or indirectly. In most cases, a certain number of machines can be daisy chained (read: closed network) in order to create a polling place, but since there is no access to the Internet it is a virtual impossibility to have multiple sites’ evoting machines networked to other sites or to a main server system (read: inter-networked).
So, while in individual Diebold (or to be fair ES&S) system could potentially be hacked, affecting votes on other machines – especially those at other sites – is not do-able. In order to affect votes at various sites, a coordinated effort would take place involving many individuals or a single individual voting in multiple polling places. HAVA attempts to resolve the former with a statewide electronic poll book.
Can some of these machines be tampered with: yes, it is possible. yes, there are design flaws.
Are proper safeguards in place to prevent this: yes, to an extreme in some cases.
Can the entire “network” of electronic voting machines be access from a single booth: no, because they are not internetworked.
I don’t know how to prove what my job is, and frankly it is not my intention to do so. I have industry knowledge and am challenging what is being reported in popular media.