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About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (June 2, 2004)
COMMENTARY 4 • T he C lackamas P rint E-voting: the great receipt dece Will the use, misuse of electronic voting cause 'Hackergate' O pinion E ditor Ben Maras Here in Oregon we are lucky enough to have a vote-by-rnail system, but many other states are not so lucky. Rather, they are forced to use electronic' voting machines, and therefore subject ed to' the wishes of any corpo rate executive or crooked hacker. What’s so bad about these machines? Nothing in theory, but there is one main problem— they are possibly , the one machine on the planet that does not give a receipt. Every day we are bombarded with receipts for everything from food to gas (ironically enough many of the machines made by Diebold) except for the one place it really matters—the voting booth. As the process goes now, a citizen walks up to the machine, authorizes themself, and uses the touch-screen to select their can didate. A confirmation is dis played on the screen and the voter selects “OK.” Now they walk away,' secure iff knowing their vote is safe on the hard drive of this raachinc. Or is it? Since no paper trail is issued, neither the voters nor the precincts have any record of votes cast. The votes arc - now lost in cyber-space. Sound like a big task to skew the vote? It isn’t. According to www. blackboxvoting.org, vo te - tampering is frighteningly sim ple. The ways are too numerous to go into in detail, but among the most simple is applying a last-minute patch to the machine to fix some problem that was just uncovered. This patch could effectively give any individual with special interests complete control of the votes in that precinct. Such an exploit could easily be hid den. One way is to embed it in a Microsoft Windows layer, which would be insulated from debug- g i n g . Diebold runs all h machines on Windows XP Embedded. Independent studies have concluded that, even if a technician was given access to the source code to such a machine, such a malicious code would be virtually undetectable. Diebold, how ever, is closed source. While the idea, of a special interests master mind may seem like a far-fetched conspiracy, it is not necessarily so. Walden D. O’Dell, a chief executive of Diebold, Inc., composed a well-circu letter to top members of thl “I am committed to I) Ohio deliver its electoral; to the President next r O’Dell said. I While this could dcfinil an innocent comment, I makes one wonder whaty the makers of such ni;( may have. Beyond the lack of sccu-i machines arc ridden wit? One such incident was repi, the Indianapolis Star, claimed that one connti'i Micro Vote (a Diebold c< >m;| machines returned 144,0(1i ... from 19,000 registered After much panicking an ing the bug, the actual a of votes turned out to lx ... close enough. I , Another such u occurred in Florida, accor; www.slashdot.org, in A Senate race was dccidcti mere twelve votes, but i A of 134 people who sigm;: register were not recorded« machine. I What is the solution?’ paper trail. Make the m print out two receipts, th keeps one and signs thi before placing it in a loch for use in a recount if net When we arc con attacked by receipts, it | silly that we would not In, where it is really needed, don’t end up wi “Hackergatc” scandal. Panhandling non-students: go waste someone else's tim Hilliary Ferguson T he C lackamas P rint / Lo! and give thanks to the one place in the world where college students can escape the ignorance of the young, and intellectually converse with their peers—■“ or can they? Not anymore! Oregon City High School stuflcnts have been popping up around campus of late and it is not only infuriating, but downright silly. How will one recognize the incognito underclassmen? It’s actually quite simple using these four easy steps. One: Is the suspect wearing baggy black pants and a “hardcore” (Slipknot, 1 jnkin Park, Mudvaync, etc.) band t-shirt? If so, the suspect is probably still in the stage of teenage angst and undoubtedly a high school student. Two: Is there a group of youngsters standing around laughing' like imbeciles over jokes that just make them look dumb? I f this, is the case, again they arc high schoolers. Three: Docs one or more of them rit ually bum cigarettes off unsuspecting T he (and legitimate) EEC students? Ding- ding! We have a winner, ladies and gents. These arc bona fide high school students. Four: Arc they shorter than the major ity of the student body? You guessed it-— the high schoolers strike again. The funniest thing is, they skip school to go to a school, instead of skipping school and going somewhere to smoke pot like every- , one else, they walk their underage jSKg butts to the only place they can sit, smoke ciga- J rettes and eat JI hamburgers ■ without being ■ pestered by M those damned ■ truancy offi- w cers. The 1 “badasses”, «can’t even drive! They come here because ^|| it’s the closest place they can walk. Puh-lease. Maybe they should focus their energies on something more pro ductive—like choosing a good vocational school or finding a burger joint in which to work. Co Editors-in-Chief: C lackamas P rint Cyndce Mady and Gory Price Ext. 2576 (Mady) or ext. 2447 (Price) Copy Editor: Katie bunk News Editor: Karlin Johnson Opinion Editor: Ben Maras Feature Editor: Karen Hill A&E Editor: Isaiah Creel 19600 S Molalla Ave. * Oregon Eity, OR 97045 .(503) 657-6958 ext. 2309 The Clackamas Print is a weekly student publication and is distributed every Wednesday except during finals week. ■ 11 v 3|| * Sports Editor: Nie Dcízcll Photo Editor: Jesse Lamond Sports Copy Editor: Frank Jordan Staff Writers: Robb Egan, Joel (laynor, Hilliary Ferguson, Jessica LcClaire, Bethany Monroe, Jennifer Trank ' * o ■ 1 ■ 4 W Hi i WIL H ■ Wk i Production assistants: Goals: The Clackamas Print at Michaclc Eooper, Jeff Sorensen, James Tombe Photographers: Truman Anderson, Angela Gerhart Adviser: Linda Vogt report the ncws jti anhoncst, unb« professional manner.The opinim expressed do not ndcess^rily refit: of the studcnOody, college adorn its faculty or The Print. 1 i-mail c to chicfcd@clackamas.cxlu. Department assistant: Pat Lichen ■ ¡ The Clackamas Print ] 1 1 1 1 ■ ■> :. 1 HR llig ííJIliBi RF* í * n F In fact, why do they even bother pre tending to be high school students? They should just dropout now and save the tax dollars that pay for the education they’re not receiving. Not only arc these high school’stu dents campus eyesores, but they could get some EEE students in real trouble. Since they’re too young to buy their own smokes, they bum them off col- Bk, legiates who don’t stop to think that maybe the recipi ent is underage. If an offi- cer were to see this, the college student could get slapped with a mighty fine, just for trying to be nice. Ha ha ha! Here’s an evil plan for y’all: let’s join forces and call Oregon Eity High School! Let them know that we’re sick of their jailbait stealing our air! Wouldn’t that be a spectacle? Imagine a dozen high school stu dents taking cover from the truancy officer who’s just spotted them. Then we can all sit back and laugh, reminiscing over the days when we ourselves were treated like inmates. ■ < JR ■ ¿Ufe 1 ?
