Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[Jon Elson]

On 10/10/2015 10:44 AM, Paul Koning wrote:
>>
> That's not the real problem.  The real problem is that you had no way to be sure, no way to verify, that the machine was recording your vote and would accurately report it later.  It might just as easily report numbers that someone had told it to report, not connected to any reality.  How would you know?  If anyone were to question this, how would you prove that the count is honest?
>
>
An election official in Ohio, I think, not an IT guy at all, 
just somebody who knew how to open files, etc, played around 
with a touch screen machine at his precinct.  I THINK it was 
the original Diebold machine, but I could be wrong on that.  
I think he plugged in a USB cable or something, and found 
the vote totals were just an open file on a memory card, and 
could be opened and edited with standard Windows tools like 
notepad!    He went public with it, and it caused a pretty 
large furor over this blatant lack of security.  The 
manufacturer of the machine had told the state that all 
files were encrypted, you had to log on with a password, 
etc. etc. and it was all lies.

You should be able to search for articles in the press about 
this.

Jon