Last time around the Ruskies got access to some state voter databases and there was some discussion about being able to hack into some voting machines (Diebold ones I think) that could be hooked up and programmed remotely. There was no definite evidence that any votes were interfered with, but there was a very strong effort to spread mis-information and create mistrust -- the Ruskies have been very, very good at that since before the October Revolution.
I don't know what was done, but I can guess -- keep all voting machines and voter databases OFF the internet. If it ain't plugged in, no one can access it unless they are on one of the networked computers. This is VERY elementary data protection, but everyone drools when you say "internet" these days, and the internet is about a secure as shouting your information from your front porch. I would also guess that newer voting machines can't be connected to the internet and are "dumb" -- that is to say, they just tally the marked boxes and report a total, possibly keeping a record of each ballot. If you make them really dumb they are very hard to "hack". We got new voting machines locally that just print a ballot. That ballot is then scanned, and has the selected candidates printed on it along with a QR code for the scanner. Makes it possible to do a hand re-count if necessary. The old machines here were the Diebold ones that didn't print anything, just recorded the votes. I never liked them, it's FAR to easy too hide code in them that changes votes with no way to check, and in fact some areas that switched to those machines had a significant shift in Republican to Democrat vote rartios compared to past elections. I think this was the cleanest and fairest election we have every had, with probably the most accurate vote count. Georgia did three counts for the Presidential election and they didn't vary more than a few hundred votes out of several million. _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
