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||
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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
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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
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¡
The Clackamas Print
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HR llig ííJIliBi
RF* í *
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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
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¿Ufe 1 ?