Reply #103: This is the hard stuff [View All]

[many a good man]

I examined specifically Triad GSI's optical scan and punch card tabulators, which counted about half of Ohio's 88 counties. The challenge was to design a system that could run on any common PC manufactured in the last 15 years. That's MS-DOS and all versions of Windows ever commercially released. The software is still written in ancient COBOL.

Touch screen systems use hardware and software that is several generations ahead of the dinosaurs like Triad's Electab. This makes the number of ways someone can hack into the system undetected almost uncountable given with the, ummm, ineffective auditing and security rules that still have not been strengthened.

IOW the old-fashioned paper-based systems are easy enough to defeat but paperless systems are infinitely easier to hack.