Today we covered two stories I’ve been trying to get to for a while on The BradCast, and they’re both related.
The first is the story of the state lottery insider who hacked the system to “win” a $14 million jackpot — begging the question: if a state run lottery with a multi-million dollar security system can’t protect against insider manipulation, how can a local election official do it, particularly with Internet Voting systems that partisans and profiteers continue to push for?
The second also relates to the first. Computer science and security expert Jeremy Epstein of Virginia Verified Voting joins me to discuss the immediate decertification of 1/5 of Virginia’s voting systems after a state analysis found what many of us had been warning about for years: the AVS WINVote system is so simple to hack that, Epstein says, if it hadn’t already been hacked in the decade its been in use there, “it was only because no one tried.”
A must-listen version of The BradCast, if I say so myself. Or you can wait until Halloween if you’re looking for something really scary.
We also covered some encouraging economic news out today, and who to “blame” for it; Missouri Republicans overriding the Democratic Governor’s veto to cut off public assistance to children and families; and what the NRA wants you to get mom for Mother’s Day…
Download MP3 or listen online below…
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_JeremyEpsteinWINVote_050815.mp3]
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Ack, “begging the question” again!
Brad I don’t mean to hijack this thread, but do you know anything about District Based Electoral System? I just read Buena Park is scraping at-large voting for district based electoral system. Apparently quite a few cities in California are considering this, but there’s hardly any information about it. I don’t know what to think, but it gave me a real bad feeling.
Dave @ 2:
I am, by no means, an expert on them, but there have been some Voting Rights Act (and the state version, California Voting Rights Act) lawsuits recently allege that at-large districts keeps out minority representation.
So, for example, if a town is 2/3 white and 1/3 minority with 5 total seats on the City Council, voting for reps for all 5 districts will tend to go to the top 5 white candidates, just based on general math. If those 5 seats were broken into direct voting in each of the 5 districts, where, say, one district was majority Hispanic and another majority African-American, you’d be more likely to end up with at least two minority representatives on the City Council.
The at-large district voting, opponents contend, are meant to keep minority representation off the City Council in such cases. Thus, there is a push in CA to do away with them. In theory, that would be a good thing. At least as I understand the issue as of now.