Just in: California’s test of its paperless voting machines show that all are hackable, reports Ars Technica.
The news comes less than a week after Senate Democrats declared it’s “too late” to demand paper trails for 2008.
Nonsense!
Paper-trail legislation has been creeping through Congress since Rush Holt introduced it in 2003. Holt re-introduced, citing vote irregularities in Ohio, after the 2004 Presidential election.
Despite many co-sponsors, the bill couldn’t get out of committee, thanks to Representative Bob (“Friend of Diebold”) Ney (R-Ohio), more widely known for mandating Freedom Fries.
It’s more than a year from now until November of 2008. That’s time enough for black-hat hackers to create and offer up for sale the kinds of code tricks California researchers identified–many of which require no more access than a few minutes privacy with one machine. The kind of privacy that you expect when you’re voting.
It ought to be time for the Democrats we just elected to make sure that all votes will be counted fairly in 2008. That’s much more important than investigating Gonzales.
Update: It turns out the Democrats agree–and (even before I wrote this blogpost) had already crafted a compromise bill to for secure voting in 2008.