How to Rig an Election

With the presidential elections underway, little could be more interesting than learning how to make sure your favorite candidate wins. With so many people involved in rigging elections these days, I think it is only fair that I teach everyone how to do it, so as to level the playing field. The only thing about this article that is meant to be a joke is it's format. Rigging elections is a very serious matter, and I hope that this fun little satire "How-to" will serve as a serious exposé. These methods, however, do work - and are being put into use all over the country. With that being said, lets get started.

The first thing you need to consider is the level of election you want to rig. Rigging local, small city elections is easier than state-wide elections - which are easier than national, presidential elections. This is due to the fact that larger elections often require more voting machines to be rigged (more on how to do that later). This being the case, I'll start with how to rig a simple local election.

First of all, you'll need access to the building where the votes will be counted. This may mean getting on your local Elections Committee (or just volunteering with them during election season), or it may mean getting a job on the janitorial staff in the building. Be creative. The more access you have to the voting machines, the better (though it doesn't take much). In fact, if the election is already a close one, you'll have all the access you need on election day when you walk in with everyone else and cast your vote.

If your city uses Diebold machines to count the votes (either the touch-screen or the optical readers) you are in luck. Diebold practically specializes in turn-key election rigging. If a different brand of machine is used, don't worry. The flaws are similar, and any computer-savvy high school kid could figure out how they work in less than two weeks time. First, lets talk about how to hack the voting machines. Then we'll discuss how to determine which machines need to be hacked in order to ensure your candidate's success.

The easiest way to rig an election is to have access to the computer used to tally up the votes to all the machines. Normally it requires a supervisor password to even view the election results. However, this software has major security flaws. In fact, Diebold's software is so easy to hack, I could literally teach a 9 year old how to do it (I'm being totally serious). The documentary "Hacking Democracy" shows how it is done better than I could here. If you will only have access to this computer before the election (such as if you are a janitorial staff member), that's okay! Just set up a little script that will perform the hack automatically after the last memory card has been counted.

The only way you could get caught using the above method is if someone did a recount and compared the computer total to the total manually arrived at by counting the physical print-outs from each individual voting machine. To make sure this doesn't happen, you can instead hack individual voting machines, which will then print out the results you want on each individual printout (as well as on every memory card). This ensures that no evidence of election tampering will exist after the election.

To hack individual voting machines (we'll focus on the Diebold touch screen variety) you simply need to buy a memory card reader/writer which are available on ebay. You can add a very simple executable file to a Diebold memory card (thousands of which are in circulation if you can't steal one from the elections office), which will start your candidate out with X votes, while starting your candidate's opponents out with negative X votes (this way the total number of votes cast by voters will always match the number of votes on the memory card).

To execute the hack, simply insert the modified memory card into the Diebold voting machine. To do this you will need a key. All Diebold machines use the same key, and there are thousands of these keys in circulation. Any locksmith will make a copy of one for you with no questions asked. If you cannot find/buy one of these keys, you can create one of your own from a picture of the actual key (still on Diebold's website as I write this). Yes, you can compare the length/depth of the notches on the picture of the key with length/depth of the entire key, and deduce the actual measurements of the real key that way. Then buy a blank from your local lock locksmith and file the dimensions of the key into the blank. Videos of this being done (and working 2 out of every 3 times) are available on YouTube. Videos of this lock being picked consistently in under 10 seconds can be found there too.

Once you've opened the memory card door, remove the old memory card and insert your new one. Restart the machine. As the machine reboots it plays a musical sound. To make sure no one hears the sound, simply plug in a pair headphones into the headphone jack on the side of the machine. The sound will be played into the headphones instead of out loud. Once the machine is finished rebooting, removed your altered memory card insert the old one. Shut and lock the memory card door, place your vote, and go home. The entire process takes under 60 seconds, and a well written executable will delete itself after the machine is rebooted - removing all evidence that it was ever there.

More on hacking voting machines can be found at "blackboxvoting.org," in the documentary "Hacking Democracy," and through simple Google searches. Learn about memory card viruses that can infect all the voting machines in a given county for you by googling "Princeton Diebold security."

The closer the race the better. In fact, if you wanted to rig a presidential election and your candidate is already neck and neck for the win, all you have to do is determine which state will be the battleground state. Then go to that state and determine which counties in that state your candidate needs to win if s/he is to win the state. Rig the elections in those counties and your candidate will win the state, and therefore the presidency! Good demographic analysis will tell you which voting stations to focus on in order to minimize the amount of work (and risk) needed to ensure that your candidate wins.

Do to limited space, I have only talked about Diebold touch screen voting machines, but the optical readers (the ones that count those ballots with the little bubbles or boxes you fill in by hand) can be tampered with just as easily (see "Hacking Democracy" for more details).

I hope you have fun this election season. I can't wait to see the differences between the exit polls and the actual elections this year!