Tag Archive for: voting

Brazilian Hacker Claims Bolsonaro Asked Him to Hack Into the Voting System Ahead of 2022 Vote

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A Brazilian hacker claimed at a congressional hearing Thursday that then-President Jair Bolsonaro wanted him to hack into the country’s electronic voting system to expose its alleged weaknesses ahead of the 2022 presidential election.

Walter Delgatti Neto did not provide any evidence for his claim to the parliamentary commission of inquiry. But his detailed testimony raises new allegations against the former far-right leader, who is being investigated for his role in the Jan. 8 riots in the capital city of Brasilia.

Delgatti told lawmakers he met in person with Bolsonaro on Aug. 10, 2022, for between 90 minutes and two hours at the presidential residence. He said he told the leader he could not hack into the electronic voting system because it wasn’t connected to the internet.

Bolsonaro’s lawyers said in a statement they will take judicial action against Delgatti, who they accused of “bringing false information and allegations, without any evidence.”

The lawyers acknowledged the hacker met with the former president and said the far-right leader ordered his defense minister to open investigations on the country’s electoral system based on claims he had heard from the hacker.

Creomar de Souza, founder of political risk consultancy Dharma Politics, said Delgatti’s testimony “is yet another brick in a wall of problems around Bolsonaro and some of his allies.” De Souza said the former president is in deeper legal trouble because his base in congress wanted the congressional inquiry to become a platform for his defense — and it has instead put him deeper in hot water.

Bolsonaro’s political nemesis, leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won the Oct. 30, 2022, presidential election with just 50.9% of the votes.

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Delgatti said Bolsonaro wanted the attempted hack to show voters that Brazil’s voting system was not reliable.

He said that after he explained why he could not hack into the electoral system, the Bolsonaro campaign asked him to tamper with a borrowed voting machine to make it appear, less than a month before the election’s first round, that the machine had been successfully hacked and results could be compromised….

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Security concerns raised over internet voting for Michigan military spouses

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Because of an editing error, this story has been corrected. House Bill 4210 would expand electronic ballot return for deployed military members to their spouses and voting-age dependents.

In Michigan’s quest to make voting more accessible in recent years, it has enacted automatic voter registration, excuse-free absentee voting and an upcoming early in-person voting period.

But the latest proposal worries some of the same election security experts who have praised the changes and worked with Democrats in charge: returning ballots over the internet.

The idea is “well intentioned” but could “seriously undermine the security of Michigan’s elections,” said J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan professor and nationally recognized cybersecurity expert.

Halderman and other experts warned House elections committee lawmakers Tuesday in a hearing on House Bill 4210. It would expand electronic ballot return for deployed military members, allowed by legislation that passed last year and will be implemented in 2024, to their spouses and voting-age dependents.

“The bedrock of Michigan elections has long been the simple fact that every vote is cast on a piece of paper which can’t later be changed in any kind of cyber attack,” said Halderman, who was appointed by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to co-chair an election security commission for 2020.

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But Benson argues Michigan can maintain its election integrity by continuing conversations with national cybersecurity professionals and federal agencies, and by following the lead of the 31 other states that have implemented this.

“We’re exploring a hybrid model that would be custom-built for Michigan and still require the voter overseas to print and sign their ballot before scanning and returning it,” said Benson, who once lived on a military base with her husband.

Similar to how Colorado does it, she explained, the local clerk would print what is returned and run it through the tabulator, creating an auditable paper trail. Voters would also be encouraged to mail a follow-up hard copy of their ballot.

She added that this electronic voting portal is…

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No, Texas voting machines aren’t switching your votes

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Sensitive touch screens aren’t always user friendly and make it easy for voters to accidentally select the wrong candidate.

THE TEXAS TRIBUNE — Warnings to double-check early-voting ballots began spreading across social media this week as some Texas voters claimed that electronic voting machines had switched their votes from Democratic to Republican.

But this isn’t a case of grand conspiracy, malfeasance or rigged machines. Instead, election officials, security experts and voting rights advocates say some of the touch-sensitive screens on voting machines can be tricky to use, much like miscues while trying to use a smartphone. Midland County Election Administrator Carolyn Graves likened the experience to texting with a small keypad.

“If you don’t hit it just exactly right, you’re gonna hit one of the letters around it,” Graves said. “It’s essentially the same thing. If you don’t hit it with the tip of your finger or turn your finger to the side, then you could hit the other [choice].”

This isn’t the first election during which voters have been wary of voting machines. In 2018, Texas officials said voters were attempting to make their selections before machines could render and record their votes, causing similar concerns in the U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and Democrat Beto O’Rourke.

“These issues have been showing up, in one form or another, since electronic voting machines were first introduced 20-plus years ago,” said Dan Wallach, a computer science professor at Rice University and longtime election security researcher. “As far as we can tell, these are simply design issues with the machines.”

So, what’s a voter to do? Election officials, security experts and voting rights advocates agree voters should carefully review their ballots to verify selections. If there is an error on a printed ballot, voters have the right to get up to two additional ballots to make…

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Internet voting a decade away, easy to hack, distrusted

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Voting on the internet using a laptop or smartphone is at least three presidential elections away and may never come, as online hackers are staying ahead of every security patch programmers throw at them.

“The future isn’t 2023,” said Princeton University professor Andrew Appel. “The future is 2030 or something.”

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Appel, the former chairman of Princeton’s Computer Science Department, has been studying voting machine security for two decades and said the country is not close to secure online voting despite attempts in some states and countries to adopt it.

“It’s going to be hard to get there,” he added, citing market forces, with device makers eager to fill mobile computers with applications and software that sometimes have bugs hackers can manipulate.

He just added an academic study of U.S. and worldwide attempts at internet voting to previous reports showing the systems to be unreliable and easy to hack.

“The science is clear,” said his report shared with Secrets, titled “Is Internet Voting Trustworthy? The Science and the Policy Battles.” “Internet voting is subject to a unique danger to which other methods are not vulnerable: that a single criminal actor without even a local physical presence could hack enough computers to change thousands of votes and alter the results of local or national elections.”

While internet voting is used by some states for overseas or military voters, he predicted that millions of votes could be altered if states turned to internet-only voting, leading to a trust crisis.

Among the best voting systems for now, he said, is one in which voters mark paper ballots that are then fed into an optical reader. That system, used in Virginia and other states, allows for an audit of the paper ballots if there are questions about the vote.

It also helps to keep the vote secret. Unlike with online banking, where customers can review their…

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