Computer Scientist Proves How Easy You Can Hack Elections

In 2016, American Election Systems in 39 States were reportedly Hacked and/or Compromised by corrupt Leaders in Office and by Foreign and Domestic Entities. How that Corruption affected Election Results is still unknown, and may remain unknown given there’s proof that Hacking can be done, without leaving a Trace.

So, how safe will our Voting Systems be in the upcoming Midterm Elections?

Switching from Electronic/Paperless Voting Ballots back to Paper Ballots is being discussed more and more and may be the only way to ensure the Fairest Midterm Elections. One Computer Scientist has been a longtime relentless Advocate for bringing Paper Ballots back to All States and exposing the Perils of Electronic Paperless Ballots.

That Scientist is Barbara Simons.

Barbara Simons is a former President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Nation’s Largest Educational and Scientific Computing Society. She is the only Woman to have received the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from the College of Engineering of U.C. Berkeley, where she earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science. A Fellow of ACM and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she also received the Computing Research Association Distinguished Service Award and the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award. An Expert on Electronic Voting, she published Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?, a Book on Voting Machines Co-Authored with Douglas Jones. She has been on the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission since 2008, and she Co-Authored the Report that led to the Cancellation of Department of Defense’s Internet Voting Project (SERVE) in 2004 because of Security concerns. She was a Member of the National Workshop on Internet Voting, convened by President Clinton, that conducted one of the first Studies of Internet Voting and produced a Report in 2001. She Co-Authored the July 2015 Report of the U.S. Vote Foundation entitled The Future of Voting: End-to-End Verifiable Internet Voting. She is retired from IBM Research.

For years, Simons was a Technologist who feared what Technology had wrought. Her cause was Voting: Specifically, she believed that the Electronic Systems that had gained favor in the United States after the 2000 Presidential Election were Shoddy, and eminently Hackable. She spent years publishing Opinion pieces in obscure Journals with titles like Municipal World and sending hectoring letters to State Officials, always written with the same clipped intensity.

Simons, a liberal, has written Books that examined Voting systems. Previously, prominent Progressive organizations like ACLU and the American League of Women Voters worked against Simons and her push for Paper Ballots. They believed Paper Ballots removed the opportunity for more People with Disabilities to Vote. While that is a valid point, a greater concern, Simons sees, is that Paperless Ballots are leaving whole Elections at Risk. In the past, Simons has been treated poorly. At one Conference, the American League of Women Voters tried to yank the microphone from hands not wanting her to continue pointing out her views and fears.

Freely Speaking her mind in Public today no longer poses a problem for Simons. In July she packed a room at the Annual Def Con Hacker Conference in Las Vegas. She told the Audience. “I lose sleep over this. I hope you will too.” She conducted an Experiment.
Four Voting Machines had been secured for the event, Three of these Types still in Use. One Team of Hackers used Radio signals to eavesdrop on a Machine as it Recorded Votes. Another found a Master Password Online. Within hours of getting their hands on the Machines, the Hackers had discovered Vulnerabilities in all Four.

That afternoon, She told USA Today, “Anything that’s happening in here, you can be sure [it’s something] that those intent on undermining the integrity of our election systems have already done.”

According to the Department of Homeland Security, those efforts included attempts to Meddle with the Electoral Process in 21 States. At the same time, a series of highly publicized Hacks, at Sony, Equifax, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, has driven home the reality that very few Computerized Systems are truly Secure.

Simons has now garnered the respect of State Officials and the aforementioned Progressive Organizations. They are finally listening.
Considered a Voting Expert, Barbara Simons currently helps to run Verified Voting Foundation and says she wishes she was wrong about Election Hacking. She believes the Databases of Voter Registrations were targeted by Russia in the 2016 Elections adding, “Our democracy is in peril.” In her Warning, she stresses that with Cyber Security, you have to Protect against Everything, but your Opponent only has to find One Vulnerability.

Simons relays some good news in that we have a Single Technology at our disposal that is invulnerable to Hacking, and that is, Paper, Her goal, and that of Verified Voting, is to get Paper Ballots back into every State.

By Verified Voting’s Count, 13 States, including populous ones such as Pennsylvania and New Jersey, still have Paperless Voting. Given the Thin Majorities in Congress, that leaves more than enough Machines to allow Hackers tremendous Power to Influence American Politics. And all 50 States use Computerized Scanners for Vote Counting, few of them with sufficient Post-Election Auditing to detect Manipulation. Mandatory Audits, in the form of Hand Counts of Randomized Samplings of Ballots, are essential to Protect against invisible Vote Theft, Simons believes. In an Unaudited system, Malicious Code could easily go Unnoticed. “It’s not rocket science,” she said. “Any halfway-decent programmer could do it.”

CLICK HERE For more information about Verified Voting.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker

Internet Voting Leaves Out Secret Ballot a Cornerstone of Democracy

If the risk of hackers meddling with Election results is not enough, here’s another reason voting shouldn’t happen on the Internet: the Ballots can’t be Kept Secret.

That’s according to a new report from Verified Voting Foundation, a group that advocates for transparency and accuracy in Elections.

A cornerstone of democracy, the secret ballot guards against voter coercion. But “because of current technical challenges and the unique challenge of running public elections, it is impossible to maintain the separation of voters’ identities from their votes when Internet voting is used,” concludes the report, which was written in collaboration with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Anti-Corruption advocacy group Common Cause.

Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia allow voters to return completed ballots by e-mail, Internet-connected fax machine, or Web portal. In most cases, this option is limited to voters who live overseas or are serving in the military. Utah extends it to voters with disabilities. In Alaska, all voters are free to return their ballots using a Web portal.

When votes are returned via the Internet, it’s technically difficult to separate the voter’s identity from the vote, says Pamela Smith, President of Verified Voting, since the server has to know that identity in order to authenticate the voter and record the vote. In the systems that states are using now, “the authentication typically happens at the same time as the voting process,” she says. That’s problematic. A previous experiment tested giving voters PIN codes, but hackers working with the researchers were able to find those numbers and associate them with voters, says Smith.
Gain the insight you need on privacy at EmTech MIT.

According to the report, issued Thursday, 20 states have laws or regulations requiring that voters who return their ballots via the Internet also waive their right to a secret ballot. In eight states, the Secretary of State or Election Officials require that voters do this even though no laws or regulations require it. Washington, Idaho, North Dakota, and Mississippi don’t warn voters that returning ballots via the Internet also means giving up their secret ballot. Montana requires by law that votes over the Internet be secret, even though that’s not technically feasible.

Smith says the trend toward using the Internet in the voting process could lead to the “Erosion” of the Secret ballot. “Almost every state has a requirement that there should be secrecy of the ballot,” she says. In order to allow Internet voting, they’ve had to “carve out a special space” that is exempt from that requirement.

Alaska goes so far as to inform voters that if they vote via the Internet, they are not only waiving their Right to Secrecy but “assuming the risk that a faulty transmission may occur.” Imagine walking into a polling station and seeing a warning like that, says Smith. “How can you field a voting system like that? That’s not right.

Verified Voting Foundation's Recommendations

Engage your state policymakers in a conversation about the importance of the secret ballot; share this report with them.

Protect your secret ballot by marking and mailing your printed ballot, avoiding using fax, email or an Internet website or ballot marking portal for anything other than requesting, and if desired, receiving the ballot.

If you are a military or overseas civilian voter, your voting process starts earlier than for voters who are not overseas.

- Get your ballot early: Request your absentee ballot today, it will be sent out 45 days prior to Election Day! Contact your local election official back home, FVAP.gov, or your voting assistance officer (VAO) to find out how.

- Get your ballot faster: You have the right to receive your blank ballot electronically if you request it. This will give you more time to get it back safely.

- Mark the printed ballot to safeguard the secrecy of your choices. Don't mark "online."

- Mail the printed ballot back. Even if offered, avoid fax, email or uploading your votes to a website or Internet portal.

- If you are a military voter, you can get express return for your ballot at no cost to you. Use the special 11-DoD label. Your ballot should arrive stateside in less than a week, and you can track its progress all the way back.

If you are a non-military/overseas voter voting absentee, check with your election official about how to vote absentee in your state, and when absentee voting begins. Check early so that you can be ready.

- Safeguard your privacy. Even if offered, avoid the use of an online method for marking and/or transmitting votes. Marking ballots without the use of a connection to the Internet is the best way to keep your vote secret.

- Use an inner privacy envelope when mailing back your ballot, and don't sign the ballot itself! Sign only where instructed.

- Mail your ballot back promptly, or if available in your state, drop it in a secure ballot drop-box or at the elections office. Some states let you track your ballot to be sure it arrives safely; check with your local election official.

CLICK HERE for more information about the report and to download the 145 page (PDF) report.











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker

Some States Will Ditch Electronic Voting Machines this Election

Some states have abandoned electronic voting machines, ensuring that their voters will be casting their ballots by hand on Election Day.

With many electronic voting machines more than a decade old, and states lacking the funding to repair or replace them, officials have opted to return to the pencil-and-paper voting that the new technology was supposed to replace.

According to Pamela Smith, president of election watchdog Verified Voting, as many as 70 percent of voters will be casting ballots by hand on Tuesday.

"Paper, even though it sounds kind of old school, it actually has properties that serve the elections really well," Smith said.  It’s an outcome few would have predicted after the 2000 election, when the battle over “hanging chads” in the Florida recount spurred a massive, $3 billion federal investment in electronic voting machines.

Do you think that number is high?

States at the time ditched punch cards and levers in favor of touch screens and ballot-scanners, with the perennial battleground state of Ohio spending $115 million alone on upgrades.  But Smith said the mid-2000s might go down as the “heyday” of electronic voting.

Since then, states have failed to maintain the machines, partly due to budget shortfalls.

“There is simply no money to replace them,” said Michael Shamos, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who has examined computerized voting systems in six states.

The lack of spending on the machines is a major problem because the electronic equipment wears out quickly.  Smith recalled sitting in a meeting with Missouri election officials in 2012, where they complained 25 percent of their equipment had malfunctioned in preelection testing.

“You’re dealing with voting machines that are more than a decade old,” Smith said.

Roughly half of the states that significantly adopted electronic voting following the cash influx have started to move toward paper.

The Presidential Commission on Election Administration in January warned that the deterioration of voting machines is an “impending crisis,” but House Republicans say the issue should be left to the states.

Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), who chairs the house committee that oversees federal elections and is a former Michigan secretary of state, said the cash infusion to the states in the mid-2000s was "unprecedented."

"State and local election officials should not rely on the federal government to replace voting machines that may be nearing the end of its useful life.  Therefore, state and local election officials should recognize that they are responsible for upgrading their voting equipment as needed, and hopefully they are budgeting accordingly," Miller said.

Maybe this problem is the beginning of mail-in ballot voting system.  It removes the need for polls, poll workers, and electronic voting equipment.  The state would only have to purchase electronic vote counting systems and still have the hard copy ballot for a manual recount.










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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State Systems for Overseas Voters Vulnerable

States trying to make it easier for troops overseas to vote have set up voting systems that are vulnerable to hacking when they allow voters to return ballots online, via e-mail, or Internet fax, says a state-by-state report released today.

The report on state voter systems evaluates each state on five criteria: 1) paper ballots or a paper record of electronic votes; 2) paper backup for electronic return of overseas ballots; 3) contingency plans at polling places if machines fail; 4) reconciliation of voter lists with vote/ballot totals; and 5) post-election audit of vote tallies.

The report, Counting Votes 2012, by the Verified Voting Foundation, Common Cause Education Fund and Rutgers Law School Constitutional Litigation Clinic, says all states should require overseas ballots to be mailed because even faxed ballots can't be independently audited.

Use the above link to read the report and view the interactive charts.









NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!

Michael H. Drucker
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