Princeton Professor Shows How Easy It Is To Hack An Election In Just 7 MinutesBy Claire Bernish In fact, Professor Andrew Appel and grad student Alex Halderman took just seven minutes to break into the authentic Sequoia AVC Advantage electronic voting machine Appel purchased for $82 online one of the oldest models, but still in use Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia, Politico reported. After Halderman picked the hulking, 250-pound machines lock in seven seconds flat, Appel wrested its four ROM chips from a circuit board an easy feat, considering the chips werent soldered in place. Once freed, Appel could facilely replace the ROM chips with his own version of modified firmware that could throw off the machines results, subtly altering the tally of votes, never to betray a hint to the voter, Politicos Ben Wofford explained. Appel and a team of other so-called cyber-academics have hacked into various models of electronic voting machines in order to prove to the public the equipment is ridiculously bereft of security. Together with Ed Felten, Appel and a group of Princeton students relentlessly hacked one voting machine after another reprogramming one popular machine to play Pac-Man; infecting popular models with self-duplicating malware; [and] discovering keys to voting machine locks that could be ordered on eBay. Their efforts have gone largely ignored for 15 years. If primaries were successfully rigged through corporate media collusion and behind-the-scenes coordination between the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clintons campaign, voters will certainly wonder whats in store when they cast ballots using deeply-vulnerable electronic voting machines. Perhaps that lack of security prompted the Department of Homeland Security to declare electronic voting machines part of U.S. critical infrastructure this week a designation generally reserved for 16 sectors, including transportation systems, dams, and utilities, among other things deemed so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof. Now that attention has been given to the ease with which a number of popular, still-employed voting machines can be compromised, officials and voters alike have expressed grave concerns about the upcoming election. This isnt a crazy hypothetical anymore, Dan Wallach, a computer science professor at Rice and veteran of the team of Princeton hackers, noted. Once you bring nation states cyber activity into the game? he hinted of potential Russian connections to the DNC hack and possible implications of foreign meddling in the national election. These machines, they barely work in a friendly environment. Thirty-one prominent security experts with the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group issued a statement in response to the DNC hack at the end of July, imploring precautions be taken because [o]ur electoral process could be a target for reckless foreign governments and terrorist groups. Look, we could see 15 years ago that this would be perfectly possible, Appel told Wofford. Its well within the capabilities of a country as sophisticated as Russia. He added ominously, Actually, its well within the capabilities of much less well-funded and sophisticated attackers. Electronic voting machines hit the U.S. electoral process in full force following the hanging chad controversy in the Bush-Gore race in 2000, in which ballots had to be hand-counted. Ludicrous pictures inundated the news, showing elections officials assiduously examining paper ballots to determine if partially-punched choices equated actual votes in the tight race a scene officials hoped electronic voting machines would avoid repeating. But those machines presented notorious problems of their own. As Wofford explained: The Princeton group has a simple message: That the machines that Americans use at the polls are less secure than the iPhones they use to navigate their way there. Theyve see the skeletons of code inside electronic votings digital closet, and theyve mastered the equipments vulnerabilities perhaps better than anyone (a contention the voting machine companies contest, of course). They insist the elections could be vulnerable at myriad strike points, among them the software that aggregates the precinct vote totals, and the voter registration rolls that are increasingly digitized. But the threat, the cyber experts say, starts with the machines that tally the votes and crucially keep a record of them or, in some cases, dont. Because this electronic equipment is now horribly outdated some machines manufacturers no longer offer tech support and considered, in large part, a failed experiment, much has been phased out for better options. But not completely and those better options still can be easily tampered with, according to Appel and his team. Indeed, the issues with electronic voting methods are too voluminous to recount in a single article, though Wofford does provide a thorough, albeit lengthy, summary here. As voters prepare to putatively choose the next American president in November, tales of rigged elections from the primaries to the presidency continue to top headlines across the country. With the sheer mountain of political funny business already evidenced this year, electronic voting machines dont offer anywhere near the sound comfort of retribution the voting public craves. Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. Houston, weve got a problem. Democratic self governance, a questionable proposition at best, is being severely tested. Our system is completely corrupted and dumbed down voters cant wait to elect their next savior so they can go back to sleep for another four years. The economy stinks, but our President maintains its awesome. Everything is rigged, and folks, corporations and sovereigns are up to their eyeballs in debt. Robots and other incredible technologies are disintermediating the known world at an ever increasing rate, and AI is about to take over the planet. Dont worry, everything is at a safe level. OK fine. Security color code is at least south of magenta, all is well. The voting machines need to be thoroughly tested. The GEMS system of fractional numbers is absurd and easily hacked or rather programmed. Im sure it is the only way the coke head biped of the dems could take the oath (what a joke). Voting machines must be BANNED, not tested. It is naive to presume that those in power will not continue to rig elections through these flawed machines, WE must demand PAPER BALLOTS HAND COUNTED WHILE OBSERVED by all who have an interest in the election, ie, representatives of all parties involved. That is the only way WE can hope to have our votes ACTUALLY COUNT again.NO MORE VOTING MACHINES!!! _ Lets quit the fakery all together and quit pretending. Lets just sell the presidency. Let the Repugnicons and Demoncraps put their money in a box give it to the Treasury and who ever had most gets to be president. Or maybe we could quit voting for the crooks! How sad for US that what you propose is prolly already the paradigm. Weve seen the enemy and they is US. Thank you. Trojan horses from the corporatists. Trump is a chump. A good ol wrestling winner take all match. didnt one of the guys working for the democratic party who created some of the first code for digital voting machines also give a statement in person to congress stating how the machines code was designed for fraud from the ground level? this was back in the 90s i believe. ty i knew i had seen this video before. so 2 decades or so later and still we have the rigged machines. obviously they want them that way. Right now my understanding is that less than 10% of the total population is even voting, one way or the other, in the last primary. Which means that some 4+ percent will be the people deciding what creature inhabits the White House. This why the U.N. now will not certify our elections, basically refusing to recognize them. They ranked us #47 in Election Integrity: Banana Republic. YES! Dan Rather reported at Mark Cubans net tv almost 10 years ago that many parties colluded to produce poor quality paper then shipped it cross country to FL as a way to produce the desired result of hanging chats. Well theres a reason for paper ballots and public viewing of the counting thereof. Kind of like there was once upon a time a reason you elected your own sheriff and who controlled all the law enforcement in your county. Those kind of things. Maybe we should think about going backwards for a change huh? 