{"id":2501,"date":"2018-09-24T05:48:15","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T05:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/us-judge-allows-e-voting-despite-hack-fears\/"},"modified":"2018-09-24T05:48:15","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T05:48:15","slug":"us-judge-allows-e-voting-despite-hack-fears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/us-judge-allows-e-voting-despite-hack-fears\/","title":{"rendered":"US judge allows e-voting despite hack fears"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n E-voting machines are in use across 14 US states
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A judge in the US state of Georgia has approved the use of electronic voting machines – despite being “gravely concerned” that they could be hacked.<\/p>\n

There wasn’t enough time before November’s mid-term elections to switch to a secure paper-based alternative, said District Judge Amy Totenberg.<\/p>\n

Fears that e-voting machines could be hacked have caused some to warn against their adoption in some countries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The judgement was a “significant” one, according to one e-voting expert.<\/p>\n

A lawsuit was filed in May last year against Georgia’s Secretary of State over the Direct-Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines.<\/p>\n

There are now less than two months until the US mid-term elections in November, when many new members of the US Senate and House of Representatives will be elected.<\/p>\n

Judge Totenberg said in her judgement the lawsuit had taken place at the “eleventh hour” and that switching to a paper-based voting system now could “just as readily jeopardise the upcoming elections, voter turnout and the orderly administration of the election”.<\/p>\n

However, she also acknowledged the seriousness of the threat posed by hackers, and rebuked state officials for not dealing with the problem sooner.<\/p>\n

‘Heads in sand’<\/h2>\n

“The court is gravely concerned about the state’s pace in responding to the serious vulnerabilities of its voting system – which were raised as early as 2016 – while ageing software arrangements, hardware and other deficiencies were evident still earlier,” she said.<\/p>\n

Later, she concluded, “The state’s posture in this litigation – and some of the testimony and evidence presented – indicated that the defendants and state election officials had buried their heads in the sand.”<\/p>\n

There are 14 US states that use machines to record votes. No paper record of the voting is made in the process.<\/p>\n

“I think that judgement is really significant,” said e-voting expert Prof Steve Schneider at the University of Surrey.<\/p>\n

“The judge is asking for [cyber-security concerns] to be addressed\u2026 saying that the 2020 elections are around the corner.”<\/p>\n

Prof Schneider told the BBC that there was a risk people using the machines would begin to distrust the democratic process if security researchers’ findings weren’t taken seriously.<\/p>\n

“I would hope that the authorities would take whatever steps they could to regain that trust while they’re still using these machines,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption E-voting machines are in use across 14 US states A judge in the US state of Georgia has approved the use of electronic voting machines – despite being “gravely concerned” that they could be hacked. There wasn’t enough time before November’s mid-term elections to switch to a secure paper-based … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}