Nothing we do matters if we don’t have fair elections

UPDATE: This will stay at the top of the page for most of the day. Newer posts are below.

BradBlog got exclusive access to a Princeton study on electronic voting systems and now reports on the findings: “Malicious Code Can Be Easily Inserted into Voting Machine, Spread from One System to the Next, Resulting in Flipped Votes, and Stolen Elections…All Without a Trace Being Left Behind—Study Also Confirms that Voter Access Cards Can Be Created At Home to Defeat Security Protocols, Allowing Voters to Vote Multiple Times in a Single Election.”

"We've demonstrated that malicious code can spread like a virus from one voting machine to another," said [team leader Edward W. Felten, a professor at Princeton's Department of Computer Science] in an exclusive interview, "which means that a bad guy who can get access to a few machines — or only one — can infect one machine, which could infect another, stealing a few votes on each in order to steal an entire election."

…The Princeton study is the first such extensive, independent, publicly-released investigation of the hardware, software, and firmware of a Diebold AccuVote DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) system of the type used in Maryland, Florida, Georgia and many other states. In all, such touch-screen voting systems made by Diebold, will be in use in nearly 40 states across the country this November.

The study, which also reveals a number of other troubling vulnerabilities – including the confirmation that voter access cards used on Diebold systems may be created inexpensively on a personal laptop computer, allowing a voter to vote as many times as they wish – was released this morning in full on Princeton University's website along with video demonstrations of some of the most disturbing revelations of the report.

Go read the whole thing. Below is a video demonstration of their findings, which I sincerely recommend watching. (Via Get In Their Face.) Spread it far and wide. Write to your Senators and Representatives, direct them to the video, and ask for legislation to guarantee fair and honest elections now before the November midterms.