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Ohio voting system is going to be the joke of this election, but Biometrics could have saved it

 

Many years ago I was involved in a project that looked into the e-voting systems when they first came in to the state of Ohio. I broke into two free standing systems within two minutes and within ten minutes to the collector or database holding all of the reports. Now we have politics playing a very big role in this election because of these systems and how people vote. I am not a voter, I have never voted in my life by choice. Why you ask? Well I have never found any person who I have wanted to vote for in twenty years.

Now Ohio is on the front page of major newspapers across the nation for voter fraud. We have people moving into this state from other states just to vote for a certain person. This is really bad and any group who would pay these people to do so has issues. Any people who would move to another state just to get a person elected have issues. Any person who would move to another state just for 30 days just to get someone elected has issues. Having someone register 70 times just to get more votes is just wrong. I think you can see where I am going with this and why I have a solution.

Time to listen up Governor Strickland; I know you have your hands full with our budget and trying to figure out why we spend so much money in our state departments (we will talk about this later). The state elections system needs to be taken out of the politician's hands and put it into a non state run department. A private company with over sight would be best and also they could fix a few problems in the mean time. Let me tell you how I would fix it, maybe after reading this you might pick the phone up and call me.

  • 1. If you have not lived in Ohio for at least 6 months, you cannot vote. You will need to do an absentee ballot in your old state.
  • 2. The e-voting system and the free stand machines will be taken away
  • 3. The new voting system will be a regular computer based system and not networked outside the voter polling location.
  • 4. The new voting system will use bio-metrics such as finger scanners to validate who people are and eliminate voting fraud. This system would be started on all driver license renewals and new applications. This could also be used by police in the field to identify who someone is when needed.
  • 5. When you vote, you have to have your finger scanned to show who you are and then you have to input your social security number on a key-pad. This will be matched against your driver's license or state records to prove that it is you. Once these are matched and the state highway patrol officer verifies the picture is really you, then you can vote.
  • 6. The governor needs to find someone who has nothing to gain to run this department, someone who has vision and has nothing politically to gain. Find someone outside the current government a none state, county or city employee.
  • 7. If you have people that say you cannot use finger print scanners because it violates their personal freedom or some other liberties, tell them they cannot vote. Plain and simple. If we make it part of getting a drivers license or and state id, that would help also. If they want to protest about how this harms they way they live, let them protest all day and all night. As they yell and cry and say the governor cannot do this to us. He cannot make us use a finger print scanner to get a driver's license or to vote. They can tell and cry but do you know where they will be saying this? Outside the voting place.

This is a good start for Governor Strickland and I wonder why some other people who are running his IT departments have not thought of this as of yet. I know why but that's another blog as to why the state needs to drop 30% of its IT staff and maybe listen to someone outside the government as to why they are over budget.

Here is the million dollar question, how much money is the state going to spend to fend off law suits that will start over who is in charge of the voting for Ohio, the voter fraud and we cannot forget the many different organizations that support the candidates. Let's face it; this month is just going to cost Ohio tax payers more money they don't have due to incompetence.

Small problem with this analysis

Useful answer?
0

You state that the 'new' system would not be networked outside the polling place. To check against SSN and fingerprint, you will have to load all SSN, finger prints and I would assume name and address. This works well for polling. In my state polling places are manned by volunteers for the most part. How are you going to insure that one of these volunteers is not going to copy the contents of this database the voters are checked against? At the hardest they would have to steal the server with the database and break the encryption at their leisure. Once broken identity theft would be relatively easy given the information on the database.

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About Larry Chaffin

Larry Chaffin Ph.D is the CEO/Chairman and founder of Pluto Networks, a consulting and VAR partner specializing in WDS, VoIP, WLAN, Telepresence and Security. Pluto Networks is a leader in WDS-Application Acceleration, Full Disk Encryption, End Point Security and Telepresence. While specializing in the needs of large and enterprise companies, Pluto Networks has been concentrating on the SMB customers to provide them with the same great service as larger companies. Pluto Networks holds SMB specializations from our partners to service all their needs. Pluto Networks has become a leader in SMB VOIP using Cisco and Linksys to service customers.

Managing Cisco Secure Networks, Skype Me, Practical VOIP Security, Configuring Check Point NGX VPN-1/Firewall-1, Configuring Juniper Networks NetScreen & SSG Firewalls, Essential Computer Security: Everyone's Guide to Email, Internet, and Wireless Security, How to Cheat at Microsoft Vista Administration, Microsoft Vista for IT Security Professionals, Asterisk Hacking, 2008 VoIP and Video Conferencing, Infosecurity 2008 Threat Analysis and author of Building a VOIP Network with Nortel's MS5100, along with co-authoring/ghost writing eleven other technology books for VIOP, WLAN, security and optical technologies. Larry is currently working on a follow up to Building a VoIP network with Nortel's MCS 5100 Book as well as new books on Cisco Telepresence Networks, Practical VoIP case studies and WAN Acceleration with Riverbed.

Larry has more than 29 vendor certifications and has been working on many others. Larry has been a principal architect around the world in 22 countries for many Fortune 100 companies designing VoIP, security, wireless and optical networks. He has expanded over time also to include application acceleration or WDS. Larry is working with major vendors now on updating current certification tests to make them real world focused.

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