Concerns with voting machines

Dear Editor: When Pentictonites go out to vote in a municipal election on voting day they like to think their wishes are respected. But are they? On a cold winter day in 2007, Andrew Appel, a Princeton University computer professor and election specialist, changed the outcome on voting machines in seven minutes. He proved something that should alarm everyone: in effect, it took seven minutes per machine to steal an election.

In testimony to a House of Representatives technology Committee on Sept. 28, 2016, which is now suddenly paying attention because of the fear of Russian hacking,

Dr. Appel noted: “Installing new software in a voting machine is not really much different from installing new software in any other kind of computer. Installing new software is how you hack a voting machine to cheat. In 2009, in the courtroom of the Superior Court of New Jersey, I demonstrated how to hack a voting machine. I wrote a vote-stealing computer program that shifts votes from one candidate to another. Installing that vote-stealing program in a voting machine takes seven minutes, per machine, with a screwdriver.” (Source: http://whowhatwhy.org/2016 /10/31/easy-hack-voting-machinesendanger-democracy/).

Appel has demonstrated and says it takes no super-hacking skills to alter voting counts: “I did this in a secure facility and I’m confident my program has not leaked out to affect real elections, but really the software I built was not rocket science — any computer programmer could write the same code. Once it’s installed, it could steal elections without detection for years to come.”

I urge everyone to watch this video explanation of vote machine hacking at: “Hacking Democracy: The Hack” on YouTube.

There has been a lot of controversy in Penticton over the last civic election. The two Accuvote OS machines in current use in Penticton are more reliable than the newer machines because unlike the newer touch screen models apparently they can’t be hacked over the internet.

However they can still be hacked using Appel’s method of altering the software. Alternatively elector voter cards can be destroyed altering the vote count. Because the Accuvote OS machines use a paper vote a manual vote count which includes a paper tally of actual number of votes against number of voters which will ensure that all votes were counted and all voters wishes are respected should be mandated by the provincial government.

Please take the time to review the above web links and ask your MLA to bring municipal elections under the Elections Act the same as provincial and federal elections. Elvena Slump Penticton