Software engineer Paul Boutin has an interesting article at Slate concerning the fraud potential of electronic voting machines:
The two most popular scenarios for Hack the Vote '04 are either a Kevin Mitnick-style cyberpunk tapping into the machines remotely, or Cheney board-member cronies who order back doors built into the software. Hollywood-style plots like these are about as likely as they sound. Instead, Stanford University computer science professor David Dill, who has been campaigning for better voting machines, says the most likely hack would be an inside job carried out by an accomplished, partisan hacker who lands a trusted job at Diebold, ES&S, or one of the election offices. "Imagine a programmer, system administrator, or even a janitor who gets access to the code," Dill says.
Boutin's solution, besides the obvious need for a paper trail, is open-source software.
(via Instapundit)
Posted by Walter at August 1, 2003 08:03 AM