How to Hack a Presidential Election

Posted by Andy_Updegrove on Oct 22, 2016 11:57 AM EDT
ConsortiumInfo.org Standards Blog; By Andy Updegrove
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According to Donald Trump, "the US Presidential Election is rigged!" Unfortunately, that's easier to do than you might like to think.

According to Donald Trump, "the US Presidential Election is rigged!" That's a bit disingenuous coming from The Donald, given that if it's being hacked by anyone, the evidence is that it's being hacked by the Russians. And not for the benefit of Clinton, either. But just how realistic could such a claim be?

To begin with, you could hack into registration data bases, plant fictitious names, and then vote those names electronically.

Electronically? Really?

Yes, really. Although general internet-based voting is not yet in place in the US (it is in some countries abroad), it is already in use by certain categories of voters, such as military personel living abroad. And according to a Department of Homeland Security, the voter registries of at least 20 states have recently been "deeply probed."

And then there are the voting machines themselves, many of which continue to have serious security flaws, but often don't retain any paper ballot for validation purposes. The average voting machine is also over ten years old, and thousands include flaws that have been well known for just as long.

Still, wouldn't it be hard to hack a voting machine?

Sadly, no....

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