Cal Univ. student sentenced for Election Tampering. Found on MSNBC!

[peabody71]

Oct. 16, 2003 / 12:15 PM ET

A VOTING SCANDAL?

There’s the possibility of an enormous scandal brewing with the GOP using voter technology stealing votes.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=452972
I can’t tell if they’re doing it yet or just getting ready to do it-or to be able to do it if they need to. And don’t tell me they’re above that kind of thing. If these guys cared about honest elections, I’d be whining about President Gore in this space. Anyway, read the extremely disturbing story above. Then read this one.
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,60563,00.html

Why, for goodness sakes is the mass media avoiding this potentially enormous story?

Meanwhile, you probably can’t read this one-since it’s in the Chronicle of Higher Education-a publication not only requires a paid subscription but also libeled me recently-but it is rather amazing.

Here’s a summary: It seems “a graduate student at the University of California at Riverside has been sentenced to spend 28 days in jail on consecutive weekends for tampering with a campus election conducted over the Internet. The student, Shawn Bijan Nematbakhsh, 21, had been charged with unauthorized alteration of computer data, a felony under California’s criminal code. Mr. Nematbakhsh pleaded guilty to a similar misdemeanor charge and was sentenced last week in Riverside County Superior Court. In April, while he was still an undergraduate, Mr. Nematbakhsh used the campus’s Internet voting system to cast 801 votes in a student-government election for “American Ninja.”

He later described the move as a senior prank intended to expose how easily elections could be rigged because of security flaws in the system. Critics of computerized voting, especially Internet voting, defended Mr. Nematbakhsh’s actions. ‘This Riverside student may be the first person in the history of the United States to go to jail for hacking an election in an effort to show the weaknesses of computerized voting,” according to a source. Here’s the restricted link.
http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2003/09/2003090501t.htm

[pinkpops]

1. where are the candidates on this?

huh?

[peabody71]

2. I talked to Dean about it.

He said he agreed that we need real election reform.

[MidwestTransplant]

3. That answer doesn't get to the heart of the question

IMO

[Andy_Stephenson]

4. Where is Clark on the issue?

Do you know?

Has he said?

[TacticalPeek]

5. I seem to recall him saying "paper ballots" (walking a rope line?).

:)

[gristy]

6. This ability to update software AFTER "certification",

described in the 2nd article as happening in Georgia in 2002 is one of the key problems, if not THE key problem. Not only is it very difficult to make sure that the software on each voting machine and the software that tabulates the votes is certified, it just ISN'T POSSIBLE to secure all these machines to ensure that their software is not changed after certification. And you can't even certify all the machines; you can only certify a small sample.

Sorry - this personal revelation is certainly not new to many DUers.

Not only can you not ensure that the software on these machines is fair and correct, it is much worse than that. It is virtually impossible to KEEP bad software OFF of these machines. It's like money in a bank. Everything has to be under lock and key ALL the time. The minute you turn your back with the vault unlocked (i.e., the machines stored in a warehouse or wherever), we will be robbed, if we hadn't been already.

These damn machines are so obviously fraudulant.

[pinkpops]

7. yes

I think the machines could have good value as visual interfaces, but the actual record generated should be in the form of a ballot that can be dropped into a box and read by an optical scanner or , for auditing purposes, by a human being. I don't know why we are not hearing more about this from elected leaders. There is an obvious flaw in thinking, intended or otherwise.

[gristy]

8. Yup, you got it right, pinkpops!

And welcome to DU! :hi:

[peabody71]

9. Gotta wonder if the flippin freepers read this stuff.

God knows they are in total denial if they do.

[Katherine2]

10. The freepers

would of course say this is just lies and slander by the liberal media, and somehow blame Bill and Hillary Clinton. They're so predictable, but so entertaining.