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Before we begin, I'd like to make my political affiliations clear by referring everyone to this thread. Note that this is only for the purpose of making my preferences clear; they are not the subject of this thread nor are they up for debate here. My intention in bringing them up is only to remove speculation on what they may be.
Now, having said that:
What I do want to address is the deployment of electronic voting machines in the upcoming presidential elections. For anyone who may not have been following it, a thread ran over the last three weeks on Bugtraq detailing a very simple backdoor in the voting machines by which pretty much anyone could manipulate vote tallies.
Granted, this was only possible in certain versions of the loaded OS and it has more likely than not been addressed by Diebold by now. However, it does bring up one very salient point: as long as you vote electronically, your vote cannot be guaranteed to be accurate. There are too many variables involved in tabulating that vote through a computer-based system to be able to truly call it accurate.
Therefore, I'm making two requests of everyone: the first one is go out and vote. I'm not so much of a partisan as to tell you to support my candidate - the important thing is that you go to the polls and register your opinion. Nobody's required to agree with your political opinion anymore than you're required to agree with theirs, but the important thing is that you exercise your fundamental right to state it.
The second request - and this *is* the important one: on November 2nd, please do not vote electronically. Go to a ballot station that uses paper ballots. Check your ballot before you submit it for hanging chads or mispunched holes. But for God's sake do not use a computerised system that is far too open to abuse and far too closed to outside scrutiny to make a decision that impacts not only your life but ultimately that of the rest of the world.
I'll step down off of the soapbox now.
Now, having said that:
What I do want to address is the deployment of electronic voting machines in the upcoming presidential elections. For anyone who may not have been following it, a thread ran over the last three weeks on Bugtraq detailing a very simple backdoor in the voting machines by which pretty much anyone could manipulate vote tallies.
Granted, this was only possible in certain versions of the loaded OS and it has more likely than not been addressed by Diebold by now. However, it does bring up one very salient point: as long as you vote electronically, your vote cannot be guaranteed to be accurate. There are too many variables involved in tabulating that vote through a computer-based system to be able to truly call it accurate.
Therefore, I'm making two requests of everyone: the first one is go out and vote. I'm not so much of a partisan as to tell you to support my candidate - the important thing is that you go to the polls and register your opinion. Nobody's required to agree with your political opinion anymore than you're required to agree with theirs, but the important thing is that you exercise your fundamental right to state it.
The second request - and this *is* the important one: on November 2nd, please do not vote electronically. Go to a ballot station that uses paper ballots. Check your ballot before you submit it for hanging chads or mispunched holes. But for God's sake do not use a computerised system that is far too open to abuse and far too closed to outside scrutiny to make a decision that impacts not only your life but ultimately that of the rest of the world.
I'll step down off of the soapbox now.
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