What’s the latest on the entire “paper trail” issue vis-a-vis our electronic voting booths?
I remember that Diebold (one of the few companies responsible for designing some of those electronic voting machines) got really upset when HBO broadcast Hacking Democracy two years ago, a documenary that tried to emphasize the degree to which these machines/computers are susceptible to purposeful manipulation.
Princeton University’s Edward Felten, a computer scientist who does work on information-security issues, made the rounds in 2006 trying to demonstrate just how prone these machines are to virus-induced tampering and fraud. He did segments for CNN, FOX, and other major media outlets showing broadcast journalists that no matter how many times they might vote (in a mock election) for George Washington over Benedict Arnold, a pre-loaded hacking program could make Arnold the winner every single time, anyway. Felten claimed that such tampering could take as little as 10 minutes to pull off — and without ever leaving any material trace for pollsters to monitor. Scary stuff!
I just tried a quick Google search on Felten’s latest work (and on the 2008 version of those electronic voting machines), but I can’t find anything definitive.
Does anybody know how many states have institutionalized versions of real-time and verifiable paper trails/receipts?
I want to assume that little major news coverage on this issue these days (even though journalists were all over it in 2006) might mean that those much-publicized problems with the electronic voting process have been resolved. But maybe everyone is just distracted by all the other serious and sensational news stories people have to follow — another bombshell, it seems, almost daily — and that was long before our economic issues took an extra dramatic turn these last couple of weeks.
