Guilty of electronic voting fraud
March 25, 2010 11:40 AM Subscribe
The verdict of
United States v. Russell Cletus Maricle et al. is in: all defendants have been found
guilty by a Kentucky jury. What makes this case more interesting than your average vote rigging scheme is that this is the only one that involved electronic voting machines.
One element of the conspirators' scheme exploited a weakness in the design of the electronic voting machines in use in certain districts.
Voters were told that their votes had been recorded when they pushed a button labeled “Vote” on the machine. In fact, there was an extra step—one that allowed the voter to review his vote and change it if desired. The vote wasn’t officially cast until the voter pushed another button marked “Cast Ballot.” So when voters walked out of the booth after having pressed “Vote,” the conspirators allegedly waltzed in, changed the vote, and then cast the ballot once the votes had been “corrected.”
Even though a number of (very good) security experts had analyzed the devices in question (ES&S iVotronic machines) and had found other flaws,
none had spotted this particular one until it was too late.
This trick was low-tech. It exploited voter confusion rather than any inherent bug in the machine—and it shows that a security threat can often come from a quarter you don’t expect.
posted by amethysts at 11:53 AM on March 25, 2010 [6 favorites]