How A Voting Machine Hack Can Endanger Democracy

The 2016 Presidential Election between Donald H. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton is Tuesday November 8th. There’s been a lot said about the likelihood that the Russians will hack into the states decentralized vote reporting databases to help defeat Clinton. The result of such a hack would alter the compiled reports by adding votes for a candidate, or deleting votes cast for a candidate. Two Princeton University computer science professors Andrew Appel Ed Felten have been warning about the vulnerability of hack-cheating in an election. Done comprehensively, it could not only cheat in an election, it could steal an election. The professors and a group of computer science students at Princeton demonstrated how to do it easily. Appel Voting Machine Hacking.  Sequoia

The Hack Details

A Warehouse Of Vulnerable Voting Machines.The Appel Voting Machine Hacking, has heighten concerns about our local and national election process. Andrew Appel Profile Princeton University Professor of Computer Science bought a Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machine online in 2007 for $82. Its one of the oldest and most vulnerable electronic voting machines in use in New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Louisiana. His student Alex Halderman Halderman Profile picked the lock in 7 seconds. Then pulled out the unsoldered ROM computer chips from the motherboard with a screwdriver. Haldeman replaced them with ROM chips that contained a vote-stealing computer program that Appel had written. The vote-stealing software shifted votes from one candidate to another.

Halerman’s endeavor took seven minutes from the moment he picked the lock, to the time the chips were switched and the door of the voting machine was closed. Furthermore, the group bought keys to the voting machine locks on eBay. To further demonstrate the vulnerability, they installed ROM chips to make the voting machine play Pac-Man.

Substantiated Local Angle

In Mercer County New Jersey, the Board of Election delivers voting machines to the voting districts a day or two before the  election. Some districts are in school gymnasiums, cafeterias, and firehouses, where people come and go easily. No one guards the machines. In the past, the author of this blog was a Mercer County New Jersey Election Board Official assigned to a Princeton elementary school polling district.

The author had the polling district voting machine keys in his possession, 18 hours before voting began. The official had the discretion to arrive at the voting location hours before the 6:00am opening of the polling district doors. It provided plenty of time to replace ROM chips. To confirm the votes you casted, you might receive a printed slip of paper confirming your votes. Since the “Help America Vote Act” in 2002, tallying votes in our elections has become dependent on machines that sometimes do not provide a paper confirmation printout for the voter. Hack A Sequoia Vote Machine

Professor Ed Felten Center for Information Technology Policy Princeton University

 Ed Felten, Felten Profile is the director of Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP). He also serves in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Appel Voting Machine Hacking. Felten and Appel gathered a group of students from Princeton’s CITP to hack more voting machines. Video How To Hack A Voting Machine.  Imagine how this easy hacking furthers cheating in elections, beyond the current election party cheating of voting for people who have died.

Both political parties accuse the other of sending paid supporters to the polls to cast votes for people who are dead. Names of deceased voters are slowly, if ever, purged from the eligible voter lists. In New Jersey you can vote without identification. State a name and address to the poll worker, print and sign the name. Then cast your ballot. It would take a lot of preparation and coordination to steal a national election via Appel’s method. Though not that hard to steal a local election with Appel’s method, especially in a small town like Princeton NJ.