Facts (as far as I can tell -- and sorry for the weird spacing i don't know how to do bulleted lists here): * DEFCON hosted a hackathon of voting machines ("ex

Facts (as far as I can tell -- and sorry for the weird spacing i don't know how to do bulleted lists here): * DEFCON hosted a hackathon of voting machines ("exact clones") * Youngsters attending DEFCON searched online and found publicly available the username and password for a given voting machine * Those youngsters then used the publicly available credentials to log in over the internet to the voting machine * Those youngsters then changed the votes made on that machine * It is illegal under the DMCA for "good guys" to attempt to hack a voting machine, either for research purposes or for a real election (which means the only folks that will try are enemy states. You know, the guys you can't prosecute for trying or succeeding.) * DEFCON successfully demonstrated hacking many voting machines, but this one made sensationalist news headlines The "misleading information": * The youngster at DEFCON didn't actually affect a real election. It was only a hackathon at DEFCON. * The much maligned voting machine is no longer in service (taken out in 2014) * The youngster was coached in how to hack the machine, he didn't just intuit that he should google for it Conclusion: The article's states that we should stop freaking out because it was only a hackathon. We should freak the f_ck out. This machine--whose username and password were ADMIN and ABCDE respectively--were decommissioned merely two years before the last presidential election. That this is the level of sophistication of a 2014 voting machine SHOULD SCARE THE F_CK OUT OF ALL OF YOU. And this article, trying to assuage those worries, should do no such d_mn thing. Paper ballots should be the only thing legally allowed to determine elections. Electronic ballots should be the "quick count" but not legally binding. Anything less is folly.