...there is something to this whole "problem with the voting machines thing." A friend of mine forwarded me a link to the Columbus Free Press article about the Bush/Kerry election. The Free Press maintains that the election was "stolen" - personally, I think that's a bit much. But what can't be disputed is that the eVoting technology is, from a security perspective, wholly inadequate.
OK, OK, I can already hear the objections: "Isn't the free press the same outlet that has front-page picture of Bush flipping the bird and text that reads 'Bush Salutes America?'" Yep, same place. They are unquestionably biased - no doubt about that. However, I'm more interested in the GAO report that they reference. Since it's not referred to in the article by name or document number, I'm assuming that the GAO report they are referring to is document number 05956 or "Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems Are Under Way, but Key Activities Need to Be Completed." This is the only election document published in the last 6 months, so it has to be the one.
Basically, the GAO validates the points that security folks have raised all along: that these systems do not meet even the basic fundamental security requirements; the audit is lacking (if not missing entirely,) the development and testing processes are opaque and unvalidated, the companies have no accountability, the processes are undefined, and there's no oversight. I'm not one to recommend reading long government documents, but this one is worth the read.
Posted by Ed at October 27, 2005 01:45 PM