Electronic Voting

After reading the article by Kennedy, and seeing the documentary in class, answer the following questions:

1.What specific concerns do people have about the Diebold voting machines? Why are they not considered secure?

People don't think Diebold voting machines are secure because when their software was uploaded, developers didn't even check for security malfunctions. They were supposed to do a routine security check and they never did it. Memory cards can be altered so that they automatically change the voting numbers and information too. Pretty much any "hacker" can get in to its system and change everything up. The main computer can be used to change the information and no traces or evidence is left.

2.If you were placed in charge of monitoring elections in California, what would you recommend to ensure the process was as fair as possible? You might choose to focus on lower-level security issues, or more high-level policy and organization issues - either is fine.

For the voting process to be fair, there should be many organizations controlling the whole process. This way, there is a smaller chance for error-if one of the authorities messes up checking some security issue, the other one can check that. Also, if there is any corruption in one of the authorities, the other supposedly good ones would block that. I would try to improve all the machines, and actually make the votes go through more than one machine, if that is possible.