Joaquín Sorianello found the defects in MSA, manufacturer of the Vot.ar e-voting system, and the next he heard about it was when the police came to his house, seized every piece of electronic equipment. Read the rest

Jason Kitcat writes, "I'm currently in Tallinn, Estonia as part of a team of independent security and elections researchers sharing our findings that the Estonian online e-voting system has serious flaws. We monitored the e-voting system in live use as accredited observers during municipal elections in October 2013. Then, using the source code the Estonian National Election Committee publishes, a replica of the system was built at the University of Michigan." Read the rest

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tried experimenting with electronic voting this year, to disastrous results (e.g., getting logged out if your password isn't strong enough, then waiting for the mail to deliver a new one -- after a phone call to customer service). Considering how the Oscars can barely get its act together to find out who they want to nominate (let alone win), just imagine how effective e-voting would be for a political election, a national one, that determined who runs the country. Hint: Not at all effective. In any way. At all. Let's never speak of this again. (via Moviefone) Read the rest

Joanna from the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes:

If you plan on being in or around San Francisco May 30, come join EFF for a Geek Reading with Barbara Simons. An expert on electronic voting, Simons co-authored Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count? As Simons told us recently 'The way we run our voting system in this country is really a scandal,and it's a scandal that no one talks about.' Lots of people will be talking about it at EFF's upcoming Geek Reading, though, and you're invited to join in the discussion.

EFF Geek Readings bring Internet users, bloggers, free speech advocates, and other interested folks together to hear from prominent writers and thinkers, meet like-minded community members, and exchange ideas.

Geek Reading: The Broken E-Voting System with Barbara Simons

(Thanks, Joanna!) Read the rest

Princeton's Andrew Appel writes on Freedom to Tinker about an illegal cover-up of New Jersey e-voting irregularities. The Princeton team have done amazing technical and investigative work on electronic voting machines, and Appel's piece (the first of three) demonstrates exactly the sort of dangers that e-voting critics have long warned of.

1 New Jersey court-ordered election-security measures have not been effectively implemented.

2 There is a reason to believe that New Jersey election officials have destroyed evidence in a pending court case, perhaps to cover up the noncompliance with these measures or to cover up irregularities in this election. There is enough evidence of a cover-up that a Superior Court judge has referred the matter to the State prosecutor's office.

3 Like any DRE voting machine, the AVC Advantage is vulnerable to software-based vote stealing by replacing the internal vote-counting firmware. That kind of fraud probably did not occur in this case. But even without replacing the internal firmware, the AVC Advantage voting machine is vulnerable to the accidental or deliberate swapping of vote-totals between candidates. It is clear that the machine misreported votes in this election, and both technical and procedural safeguards proved ineffective to fully correct the error.

NJ election cover-up Read the rest