Wisconsin’s old State Elections Board website (http://elections.state.wi.us/) appears to have been “hacked by Sovalye”…
The State Elections Board was replaced by the WI Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.) in 2008 as the state’s top election authority, combining responsibilities of both the Elections Board and the State Ethics Board into the agency. The G.A.B.’s website (http://gab.wi.gov/) does not appear to be hacked. For now.
Of course, that’s just a website, not an actual election or e-voting database. So just because the state’s Elections Board website proved to be insecure and was hacked does not mean their actual elections are vulnerable to hacking in any way, shape or form, right? That, even though the state, shamefully, does not bother to check even a single ballot to make sure it has been tallied accurately during an election by its computer op-scanners made by Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S.
Why worry?
The BRAD BLOG has been warning about the manipulation of e-voting systems for years, along with members of the world’s computer science and cyber security communities, and even the CIA, as our own Ernie Canning noted just last week. And yet, our nation continues to use the same vulnerable e-voting systems to tally our elections, rather than bothering to count them with our own, far more reliable and verifiable, hands and eyes, as per Democracy’s Gold Standard.
I could link back to all sorts of e-voting hacks we’ve reported on over the years here, like this one from Princeton in 2006 or this one from the U. of MI in 2010 or this bone-chilling warning from the CIA in 2009, but they’ll mostly likely just be ignored. Again.
Instead, we’ll just tease you for now with news of yet another new e-voting hack — perhaps the most disturbing one yet in a number of ways — that we’ll be reporting on very soon. Let’s call that one a special delivery for election officials like Jones County, MS, Circuit Clerk Bart Gavin, who reportedly told his county Board of Supervisors this past week that the Diebold touch-screen voting machines used by the entire county “record every vote and there is no way for them to be tampered with.”
Really, Bart? You’re gonna stick with that, are ya?
I’m betting paper ballots are really hard to hack.
As a long time Wisconsin resident, I have long suspected and will not be surprised to to hear that there has been illegal software programs and tampering with our Diebold type touch-screen voting machine system as well as plain old voter discouragement.
For 27 years, before I moved, I used to live and vote every single election at the city hall 2 blocks away from my home in Scott Walker’s old home district.
One presidential election, I was stubbornly told by an election offical checking the voter role that I wasn’t on the roll and couldn’t vote there. I loudly called for a supervisor and they suddenly found my name and address right there on her role book as a legal registered voter.
I recently moved and bought a house in a small town and registered for the last presidental election. I had changed my drivers license and even had to get an offical letter from the city clerks office to show to the election people at the voting place.
They were diffent type of voting machines and I was suppousedly voting a simple straight ticket. I noted one local incumbent from the other party was running unoppoused.
I checked my vote and the election offical said that I could double check my vote in a small mirror on a paper like reciept attached to the machine. Straight party ticket, everything looked good and I pushed vote.
The machine seemed to take my straight party vote but in doing so it also appeared to automatically also gave or applied a vote to the unoppoused other party incumbent.
I said whoa there, called for an offical and stated what I believed to have happened when I pushed the vote button.
I told her that I didn’t intend to and wouldn’t vote for that other party incumbent in a hundred years but it appears that this damned machine of hers actually applied my vote to him because he was anunoppoused other party incumbent.
She gave me some offical and semi-technical BS explaination and told me that I should have voted for each of my individual party candidates and that wouldn’t have happened.
Yeah, since when does a straight party ticket vote automatically then apply a vote to an unoppoused local candidate of the other party.
Sorry for the long post but voting is important, it shouldn’t be difficult and Something SMELLS in FitzWalkerstan.
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That the rethugs must hack or disrupt the election process to be elected tells us a great deal about their commitment to “We The Peopleâ€. The current party makes a lie of the people’s will – if they can’t get the people’s support with lies and misdirection – they ignore them.