ATS: Election Judge Was an Outspoken Critic of E-Voting

Aviel Rubin, otherwise known as Avi and is a well regarded Johns Hopkins computer science professor, served as an election in Maryland on Super Tuesday. You may not know Avi, but he is credited with what is now known as the "Hopkins Report" which has been extremely critical of the Deibold Accuvote machines. www.avirubin.com... The security risk I saw was that Diebold had designated which machine would be the zero machine, and at one point, all of the vote tallies were loaded onto that one machine in memory. That would be the perfect point to completely change the tallies. There is no need to attack all of the machines at a precinct if someone could tamper with the zero machine. In fact, even when the modem is used, it is only the zero machine that makes the call. In the code we examined, that phone call is not protected correctly with cryptography. Perhaps that has been fixed. I was glad to see that the administrator PIN actually used in the election was not the 1111 that we used in our training, and that we had seen in the code. This is an amazing and extremely eye-opening account of an e-voting critic, spending his day as an election judge in a district using the very machines he criticized so strongly. Avi's account should be required reading for every ATS member who is a U.S. Citizen. Related News: Voting-machine critic will be the judge today High-tech voting machines have yet to earn public trust Electronic Vote Faces Big Test of Its Security Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion: Electronic Voting ELECTION THEFT - the history of, and Bush trying it on again 2004 [Edited on 3-3-2004 by SkepticOverlord]

"What do I do if it says it is rebooting?" Head judge Marie turned white, and Joy's mouth dropped. My heart started to beat quickly, when he laughed and said "just kidding." There was about a two second pause of silence followed by roaring laughter from everyone.

If this happened, would all the votes been lost?



I continue to believe that the Diebold voting machines represent a huge threat to our democracy. I fundamentally believe that we have thrown our trust in the outcome of our elections in the hands of a handful of companies (Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S) who are in a position to control the final outcomes of our elections. I also believe that the outcomes can be changed without any knowledge by election judges or anyone else. Furthermore, meaningful recounts are impossible with these machines.


I wonder how many feel this same way. Should we find another way? Another lost election for the people?