If your voting place this November uses Diebold voting machines, you might want to get another set of locks for them.
Computer science doctoral students at Princeton, in their Freedom to Tinker blog, found that getting access to a Diebold voting machine is not that difficult:
The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine - the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus - can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet.
They conducted a live demonstration and were successful with a key that one of the participating students had from a previous job.
The Princeton computer scientists found out more about the particular key they used (via Freedom to Tinker):
A little research revealed that the exact same key is used widely in office furniture, electronic equipment, jukeboxes, and hotel minibars. It's a standard part, and like most standard parts it's easily purchased on the Internet. We bought several keys from an office furniture key shop - they open the voting machine too. We ordered another key on eBay from a jukebox supply shop. The keys can be purchased from many online merchants.
I'm starting to think that paper ballots are not that bad after all.
Thankfully, my county uses optical scanner voting machines. The actual paper ballot is stored in the machine and can be counted by hand if it comes to that. If somebody screws up their ballot, it kicks the ballot back out of the machine without counting, so that the person can correct the problem. Impossible to overvote or undervote. They should trash the diebolds and use optical scanners nationwide.
I would also add that National Conventions under this system would be vibrant and decisive events, not the moronic staged productions that the Republicans and Democrats currently put on. Since it is very unlikely that any one candidate would reach the convention with a majority of delegates (in fact, it would be likely that most delegates would arrived unpledged) it would force a floor fight to select a parties Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates and to approve a platform. Of course, the LP is probably facing the mother of all floor fights in 2008. :)
Thankfully, my county uses optical scanner voting machines. The actual paper ballot is stored in the machine and can be counted by hand if it comes to that. If somebody screws up their ballot, it kicks the ballot back out of the machine without counting, so that the person can correct the problem. Impossible to overvote or undervote. They should trash the diebolds and use optical scanners nationwide.
Posted by: Mark B. at September 19, 2006 05:21 PM