OK, let me start out by saying DO NOT DO THIS. It's not funny, it's not cute, you won't make your hacker bones and be 1337 (that's "leet" in hacker-typing, AKA "elite") by doing this. You'd be a criminal and very, very under arrest if you did this.
But...
As a thought puzzle, I was wondering what would happen if someone were to cut the power at a polling station.
The nice part about a mechanical system that uses no electronic parts is that voting requires no knowledge of this stuff. That's why punch-cards have survived so long, they're easy to set up, easy for users to use, easy to maintain.
Electronics require power. They also require set up, require occasional maintenance, and can lose everything for no reason ("Yep, cosmic rays," a collegue of mine used to say.)
Anyway, one power outage at a polling station, would be amazingly simple to create, and could affect the outcome of several races. That's nothing to say of an EMP taking out not only an area, but in a city, a LARGE number of electronic systems. I encourage no one to do this, ever.
Frankly, I'm not thrilled about Georgia using something this fragile. It's way too easy to hack. See Black Box Voting for more information.
Posted by Ted Stevko at October 26, 2004 02:04 AM | TrackBack