For $26 and an 8th Grade Education, You Can Hack a Voting Machine

Region:
In-depth Report:

Did you know that for just $26 and an 8th-grade education you can hack a voting machine? This has actually been common knowledge for years, since a study at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois developed a hack to manipulate voting machines just before the 2012 elections.

The researchers who developed the hack were actually able to hijack a Diebold Accuvote TS electronic voting machine, one of the most popular voting systems at the time.

Two of the lead researchers in the study were able to demonstrate a number of different ways that voting machines could be hacked. They used a $1.29 microprocessor and a circuit board that costs about $8, along with a $15 remote control.

They demonstrated that the cheap hack worked from over a half-mile away.

“When the voter hits the ‘vote now’ button to register his votes, we can blank the screen and then go back and vote differently and the voter will be unaware that this has happened. Spend an extra four bucks and get a better lock, you don’t have to have state-of-the-art security, but you can do some things where it takes at least a little bit of skill to get in,” Johnson said.

As far as how easy the hack is, Johnson told Popsci that “I’ve been to high school science fairs where the kids had more sophisticated microprocessor projects.”

Watch the documentary “Hacking Democracy” for an in-depth look at the flawed voting machines the U.S. uses in the electoral process.

Even if your vote is actually counted (it probably isn’t), it still won’t matter who wins in the end, anyway—they are all going to carry out the exact same policies with just slightly different rhetoric behind them. It should be obvious by now that this system is not only inherently corrupt, but also failing miserably and in the midst of collapse.


Articles by: John Vibes

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: [email protected]

www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.

For media inquiries: [email protected]