Sequoia Voting Systems/Smartmatic: A shocking 2008 election conspiracy ExposeD.

The other thing with this reverse conspiracy, that is to say one that is intended to be uncovered, is that if it succeeds, it will also give the powers that be carte blanche to invade Venezuela and get their hands on their oil.

The more I think about this, the more plausible and scary it becomes.

It's really unlikely that the outcome of the election will be affected by hackers, since I believe all election machines are designed as standalone, with no link to the outside world. In a lot of the designs I've read, votes are basically loaded onto memory cards, which are then transported to a separate machine which tallies.

Even if a hacker could affect one station, it's very unlikely, therefore, that they can attack the entire system from the outside.

Any perturbations you see in results are far likely to be from the original code, from election officials, or some other factor, therefore.

Hackers get a bad name and rep, sometimes, and while they are very very very good, they are not gods.

reply to post by Inannamute


I don't think for this conspiracy to work you need hackers.
You just need enough of these machines to put the results in jeopardy nationwide so that enough people ask why.
Then it begins.

reply to post by schrodingers dog


Maybe God is the ultimate hacker here. Humans are not in control of their own destinies. It doesn't really matter who win really.. Life will go on like normal.

Originally posted by mapsurfer_
reply to post by schrodingers dog

 

Maybe God is the ultimate hacker here. Humans are not in control of their own destinies. It doesn't really matter who win really.. Life will go on like normal.

Yeah, I appreciate the God angle, but I don't think he needs to hack to get things done.

Now, back to the topic at hand ...

Originally posted by Mercenary2007
It does make a little sense that ol' Hugo Chavez would want to interfere with the U.S. Elections though. With his mind set he sees McCain as a 3rd term of Bush and he probably thinks the U.S. is going to bomb Venezuela back to the stone age.

Well, considering Russia's relationship with Venezuela, which has only strengthened with time, this conspiracy could have its ultimate roots with Mr. Putin. That is quite scary.

The answer to this disgrace is obvious and simple. You open source the software, and peer review every aspect of it using security professionals which are in abundance. The hardware to be used is the standard PC.
So the rollout is readily achievable and requires no specialized hardware.

Please believe me when I tell you it is quite possible to provide extremely secure software in this way. We live in the age of encryption and digitial certificates and signatures. I could envision every voter having a digital certificate and emailing their votes in with a receipt requested transaction. Authenitcated, validated, and non-repudiated. Digital signatures are legally binding signatures.

In such a scenario people could vote from home or office. We could actually have a more democratic society than ever before possible.

Digital certificates are electronic media and therefore free of cost other than the infrastructure to generate distribute and maintain them. That is to say a server, or in this case a bank of servers.

reply to post by Cyberbian


Well, I'm no computer expert, but my understanding is that eventually every program is hackable. Listen, as long as there are elections there will be some way to rig them. Also what you are proposing is a slippery slope to referendum (direct) democracy which imo presents a whole different set of problems and issues.

The issue here is that there is a clear line between thousands of voting machines, RIGHT NOW, leading back to some very "bad" people who wish us ill.

reply to post by Cyberbian


Cheers on that idea. I have been waiting on the day that they will put voting online. The internet can actually be secured pretty well when directed to a specific site.
As you said, with the right encryption and certificates combined with strict timeouts, online voting from a home pc would be very plausable.
Server arrays can be extremely secure as long as the engineers are good enough and know their job.

Hacks occur when security and admins get lazy and do not keep up with technology changes. Have you noticed that when the White House or Pentagon gets hacked, it is usually something stupid? I mean, when you slack off on proper password regulations, naming conventions, identity restrictions, and leaving unattended computers online/running when not in use is just asking for trouble.

Back on topic...this information is very disturbing that a corrupt leader in another country is in anyway connected with the US voting process. Barring the knowledge of involvement by drug cartels and Dubai interests, it makes absentee voting seem that much more popular.

It is starting:

Oct 2nd
Wednesday's tests were simple. Election workers took 262 ballots previously rejected by the machines as over- or under-votes in the judicial race and ran them through two machines. All of them should have been rejected again in the tests.

That didn't happen.

On the first two tests of 160 ballots, the machines accepted three ballots as good votes. On tests on 102 more ballots that should have been rejected, the machines first accepted 13 ballots as good votes and then 90 on a second run.

Representatives from Sequoia Voting Systems were not at the test and could not be reached to comment Wednesday night.

sun-sentinel