AP reports:
The first online election for student government at Berkeley High School became a lesson in more than democracy. Students also learned about vote fraud, hacking and digital privacy after a high school junior who was running for class president cast hundreds of fake online votes for himself.
As many as 2,400 students were eligible to vote by email in last month’s weeklong election. When a sudden surge in votes for one candidate started coming in the day before the election was to end, though, the school’s director of student activities, John Villavicencio, became suspicious.
Read more on Westport News.
So how much of this was facilitated by the way schools use Google and EdTech? The reporter notes:
The cheating candidate, a junior making his second run for class president whose name was not released, had access to a list containing students’ names and ID numbers. Voting in the election, it turned out, was done using a Google form that could be accessed using Gmail accounts issued to students by the district, with a default password that includes each student ID number.
I wonder what other mischief or mayhem could be perpetrated with a default password system…..