Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Failing Grade for Ohio's Voting Thingees

This is all pretty awful if not too surprising...

A team of computer scientists in beige colored academia joined their colleagues in the private sector to sharply criticize (is there any other kind?) the integrity of voting machines, procedures, and especially the systems used in good ol' Ohio. 

We are constantly told that Ohio will be a state crucial to the outcome of the upcoming presidential elections and supposedly played a role in the past two presidential contests resulting in ol' Chimpmeister Meisterchimp becoming "preznit".

In their report, which was released last Friday, the scientists made several troublesome points:
° Poll workers could install software bugs in the voting systems to reapportion votes.
° Standard practices in the use of cryptography, password management, and hardware security have not been followed.
° Auditing of the systems is untrustworthy.
° Software maintenance is “deeply flawed,” leading to lockups and crashes.

So, we can't trust the machines.  Check.  We cannot trust the companies that make the machines.  Ok, check.  We certainly cannot count on Rethuglicans to play fair on the playground even if the machines do work.  Yeah, double check.  So, what can we expect from this next fun-filled election merry-go-round?

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