> From: Crispin Cowan [mailto:crispin@private] > This doesn't work for vote by mail, because ballots can be > intercepted > anywhere between the voter and the counting offices. Want to > rig a close > election? Bribe 100 letter carriers. A few thoughts... Theoretically, you could bribe polling working just as easy as you could bribe a postal carrier. The polling worker could hand you a corrupted ballot, get your ballot out of the box - whatever. Fortunately, both postal carriers and polling workers in this country seem to take their responsibility pretty seriously. As such, I am not terribly worried about these individuals throwing an election. But, needless to say, the opportunity for election fraud exists at many levels. Electronic systems merely add a new mechanism for abuse. The only difference with electronic systems is that a very few people really understand how they work. Hence, you have a group of people with the capability to cause problems and do so virtually undetected. This is why such systems need audit trails that can be followed later. One of the complaints about the Deibold system was that it was essentially a black box. There was no way to audit the function of the system. Hence, some bright hacker could corrupt the system at some point and for the rest of the day all votes for George Bush could get attributed to Al Sharpton. Oregon will NOT be using Deibold's system. Deibold was under consideration, but the elections group selected a local firm - Saber Consulting - to design a new system. It would seem to me that election fraud isn't nearly as serious of a problem as voter turn out. When only 40% of the eligible people participate in an election, then essentially only 40% of the population is making decisions for the remaining 60%. Anything that encourages voter turn out without causing significant opportunity for fraud seems like a good idea to me. ___________________________________ Andrew Plato, CISSP President/Principal Consultant Anitian Enterprise Security 503-644-5656 Office 503-644-8574 Fax 503-201-0821 Mobile www.anitian.com ___________________________________
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