How to Hack an Election

Joel of Pax Nortona sent via e-mail a link to this editorial in the NYT on "How to Hack an Election." It tells of the pitifully bad security rating given to a proposed online voting system in Maryland; and are you surprised to learn that the state officials gave the negative report a very positive spin and are going to proceed to use the system? Easily picked locks on hardware, the ability to change vote counts in the voting booth by attaching a keyboard, and the ability to change vote counts remotely were all picked up in the report, and even if these glaring deficiencies are fixed, the system has no audit trail to fall back on if better hackers appear (which they always do.)