Rage Against the Voting Machine
A brief history of electronic voting with Diebold
By Anastasia Ealey
Voting can be a delicate, controversial matter. So the fact that Diebold electronic voting machines have attempted to bring relative ease to the process should be a welcome change, right? Not so fast. Unfortunately, these attempts have, in many cases, proven to be disastrous.
In a report given by the Center for Information Technology of Princeton University, the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine proved not only susceptible to extremely serious attacks, but also vulnerable to a “voting machine virus” that could easily be installed within less than a minute of having its memory card physically removed.
In late 2003, an article on computerworld.com pointed out more valid concerns over the encroaching replacement of paper ballots by the Diebold touch-screen machines. IT professional and computer scientists were the loudest critics, and it turns out they were right—these serious errors have led to various cases of voter fraud nationwide.
Even the National Institute of Standards and Technology (which advises the U.S. Election Assistance Commission) declared that electronic voting machines cannot be made secure. And, a Board of Elections in Ohio had many headaches and cutthroat finishes that left questions as to the accuracy of the elections on both sides.) was even forced to get permission to reprint paper printouts of the votes because faulty technology made the votes unreadable. (In fact, in 2000, 2004 and 2006,
Wherever they’re used, the Diebold machines only put the integrity of elections at risk. Nowhere was this more clearly illustrated than when FOX News aired a video of “Baxter the Chimpanzee” deleting a Diebold machine’s audit log, which is supposed to keep track of all the votes tabulated in that machine.
It just goes to show that no matter how wonderful we think technology, it is never immune to monkey business.
If even monkeys can seriously tamper with the results from these machines, imagine the damage that could be done (or perhaps has already been done) by clever humans with an agenda. We, as Americans, need to be guaranteed a reliable method of voting, before we all end up raging against the machines.
