Hacking the Voting Machines By Charles Taylor (Florida)

How easy is it to hack US voting machines, and almost certainly similar voting machines in other jurisdictions? Professor J. Alex Halderman, an electronic security expert, has repeatedly hacked US voting machines to prove their vulnerability. "We've created attacks that can spread from machine to machine like a computer virus and silently change election outcomes.""We studied touch screens and optical scan systems." Then, emphasizing each next word with a staccato delivery and direct eye contact, he stated: "And in every single case, we found ways for attackers to sabotage machines and to steal votes. These capabilities are certainly within reach for America's enemies."

If these methods are capable of being used by foreign enemies, be sure that domestic enemies, namely the present regime, will use such methods as well.

https://alumni.umich.edu/michigan-alum/hacking-the-vote/

"Professor J. Alex Halderman has made a career studying electronic voting security. His research has changed the concept of stolen elections from theory to reality.

"I know America's voting machines are vulnerable," J. Alex Halderman firmly stated, pausing to lift his head from the page he read to look up at a phalanx of U.S. senators, "because my colleagues and I have hacked them—repeatedly—as part of a decade of research studying the technology that operates elections and learning how to make it stronger."

It's not hyperbole to say a shudder swept through that august meeting room in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., as Halderman delivered a much-rehearsed line at the onset of a six-minute statement. Until the U-M computer science professor began his testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 2017, the idea of a hacked American election felt to many lawmakers like a still-theoretical notion. Other technologists and elections integrity experts had warned members of Congress in such formal settings about abstract vulnerabilities, but state officials and election machine vendors had repeatedly insisted they had it all under control.

Halderman has little patience for such coddling. That his voting machine intrusions took place in laboratories rather than live elections made his message no less alarming to the committee.

"We've created attacks that can spread from machine to machine like a computer virus and silently change election outcomes," Halderman continued. "We studied touch screens and optical scan systems." Then, emphasizing each next word with a staccato delivery and direct eye contact, he stated: "And in every single case, we found ways for attackers to sabotage machines and to steal votes. These capabilities are certainly within reach for America's enemies."

After the aforementioned decade of warning lawmakers about the dangers posed by the machinery of U.S. elections, Halderman, 37, had delivered his message directly to the country's most powerful people. Since then, he has returned to the Capitol routinely to chat with legislators and their staff as Congress passed $380 million in funding for states to modernize their equipment and security practices. In addition, Sen. Richard Burr, the chair of the committee Halderman testified before, sought his input into an election reform package that, as of press time, has yet to be introduced.

It was, he senses, his willingness to declare everything not just hackable but hacked that made heads turn during his Senate testimony. And it is those daring theatrical flourishes—combined with a congenial demeanor of genuine, limitless patience with less tech-savvy people—that has thrust Halderman to the forefront of the quest for safer elections as well as other key high-tech security and privacy issues. At the hearing, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, good-naturedly referred to Halderman as someone who "likes to break in" to election systems and followed up by telling him, "I think what you did was important." Halderman just chuckled along rather than correcting the senator's implication that he'd hacked live elections.

The only reason there's no evidence of whether voting machines or vote tabulating equipment was hacked in the 2016 presidential election, Halderman insists, is because nobody allowed him or anyone else to check. This is the core of his advocacy regarding electronic voting machines and vote tabulators: He loves technology and believes it can improve lives, but he also urges extra caution when it comes to a process as important as selecting leaders.

In the weeks after the election, Green Party candidate Jill Stein filed for recounts of votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The intellectual backbone of that effort, however, came from Halderman and a clutch of computer scientists and elections experts who pushed for the chance to analyze the computer equipment used in those states for evidence of malware. After an erroneous report in New York magazine set off a frenzy by claiming Halderman felt he had "persuasive evidence that the results … may have been manipulated or hacked," Halderman wrote a widely read Medium essay in which he asserted he never said that but was, nonetheless, concerned.

"The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania," he wrote. "Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts."

In the end, the effort didn't succeed. On cable news and social media, Halderman was dubbed a Stein puppeteer trying to steal the election for Hillary Clinton, and court rulings blocked recounts in Pennsylvania and halted them in Michigan. In Wisconsin, recounts were completed with negligible vote changes, but nobody was able to inspect any of the equipment.

It was remarkable, then, that just six months later Halderman was invited to testify for the U.S. Senate and received warm reception from members of both political parties in a setting that can be notoriously partisan and contentious. To prepare, Halderman spent a few days with a "murder board" of friends and colleagues drilling him with possible questions and rehearsing his opening statement. The aim was for Halderman to avoid seeming partisan.

"One thing we were careful about was trying to figure out how to keep the focus on the secure voting systems we all want instead of letting the conversation go down a rabbit hole of concern about the election just passed," says Robinson, who helped edit Halderman's testimony. "We didn't want him to mention particular problems. We want everyone to have reason to trust our elections."

On video of the hearing, Halderman appears unflappable as he explains why a certain type of inexpensive, statistically sound audit of paper ballots after an election ought to be routine and is key to double-checking the computer's results. In actuality, he says, "My adrenaline levels were so high, my heart was beating so fast. It was all I could do to read those prepared remarks, but when I was done, it was a tremendous relief."

The message seemed well-received, and a few states are starting to consider post-election audits. Since then, Halderman has become a media fixture. The New York Times even produced a short film in which Halderman staged a mock election between Ohio State and U-M at the Beyster Building on North Campus. Knowing that most students would vote for U-M, he demonstrated how easy it is to hack the machines and produce a Buckeyes win.