FIRED UP. READ PLEASE.

Disclaimer: I could care less how you swing politically. It’s not really my business, and there’s a 100,000,000 blogs out there that would love to try and swing you one way or another.

I’m fired up. It takes alot to do that, I try and stay fairly mellow, but two things that have been brought to my attention have infuriated me, both has a citizen and as a geek. Simply put, trusting vote totals from a Diebold Accuvote voting machine is folly, you have no guarantee that the totals are correct. Might I remind us all that the great state of Georgia uses this exact type of voting machine.

Now listen, I’m kind of ranting, and you don’t really have alot of reasons to believe me aside from any trust you previously had in me. But let me explain.

First of all, I’m a cynic. I’m a professional at it. I an skeptical of so much so often, and that’s not a good thing, but it’s how I am. If someone comes to me with some claim that falls out of sync with what I know, I assume it’s false until I see some proof, not the other way around. As such, conspiracy theories about election machines being easily hacked and elections rigged aren’t really a surprise to me, someone is always pissed about something.

And that’s how I was with these glorious claims of how simple it would be to hack an election and secretly change ballot totals. But then I found these two items…

Item 1

Ars Technica article detailing exactly how you could steal an election quietly, if you wanted to. – Link to page | Link to PDF

Simply put, this article doesn’t put a spin on it, it explains how electronic voting works in America, how different types of machines work, and then goes on to examine the glaring stupidity of the design of the voting machines. It examines specific security flaws at all different levels of the voting process.

It’s somewhat long, fairly dry, and technical in nature. To some of you, that makes you want to click the link more, to some of you, a whole lot less =).

Item 2

HBO Documentary – “Hacking Democracy” – Link to Google Video | Link to search results on Google Video for “hacking democracy” should original mess up

Disclaimer: Yeah, I know it’s from HBO. Yeah, I’m well aware everyone has an agenda, and there’s a spin on this.

But who cares. Spin it any way you want, the findings in this film, in which they actually have a mock, mini-election and perform a incredibly simple hack that there would be no way of tracing… who cares how they spin it. That SUCKS for any political party, it doesn’t matter how you look at it. It’s real long, and if you don’t have an hour and a half to watch, at LEAST start at 1:07:00 and watch till the end. It shows what’s so scary and what has got me going.

So what do we do? I don’t know. Honestly, there’s no chance much can be done in time for the very-soon election. Getting informed, and coming to an opinion about the whole system is the first step.

FL: Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress – enough dreary election talk. Here’s a letter Ben Franklin wrote to a friend describing what he should do in regards to some… rather sensitive decisions. Frightening and awesome at the same time.