A voting system is a communications system with some extremely weird characteristics. Nevertheless, this communication system still shares problems with more traditional communications systems. The simplest problem is ensuring that the system is 'live' -- i.e., that it actually is carrying information. Also, voting systems are highly targeted by hackers, so standard problems like 'replay attacks' must be solved. When Akamai (or any other large-scale communications company) wants to map out the internet, it sends packets, sometimes in pairs, in order to detect connectivity, latency, throughput, error rates. These packets aren't 'payload', in the sense that Akamai doesn't get *paid* for transmitting these packets, but it needs to ascertain the characteristics of the various communications links in order to better plan for actual paying traffic. The voting system also desperately needs to map out its network, and make sure that it is working, even in the presence of 'noise', out of order delivery, random delays and/or active *jamming*. Due to the weird nature of the voting network, however, these 'signaling' packets need to be distinguished from 'regular' packets (payloads). But due to the nature of detecting hacking, jamming and other 'active attacks', it may be necessary to make the signaling packets indistinguishable from payload packets as they are crossing the network, and the only knowledge of which packets are which is found in the testing logic itself. I.e., in order to properly test the voting network, it may be necessary to inject a *known* number of 'false' votes into the network, and subsequently subtract these false votes from the totals. Such 'false' votes can also be used to better protect voters' privacy in precincts where there are only a handful of voters. In these precincts, the 'false' votes can temporarily drown out the real votes, but these 'false' votes will later be subtracted from the totals for the 'real' vote. Clearly, there are great dangers in a poorly implemented voting system with 'in-band' signaling. However, there are also great dangers in *not testing* a voting system for link failures and active hacking attacks. Has anyone else considered these kinds of problems?