New Voting Systems Assailed - Computer Experts Cite Fraud Potential

Washington Post ^ | 3/28/03 | Dan Keating

[Mark Felton]

As election officials rush to spend billions to update the country's voting machines with electronic systems, computer scientists are mounting a challenge to the new devices, saying they are less reliable and less secure from fraud than the equipment they are replacing.

Prompted by the demands of state and federal election reforms, officials in Maryland, Georgia, Florida and Texas installed the high-tech voting systems last fall. Officials in those states, and other proponents of electronic voting, said the computer scientists' concerns are far-fetched.

"These systems, because of the level of testing they go through, are the most reliable systems available," said Michael Barnes, who oversaw Georgia's statewide upgrade. "People were happy with how they operated."

In Maryland, "the system performed flawlessly in the two statewide elections last year," said Joseph Torre, the official overseeing the purchase of the state's new systems. "The public has a lot of confidence in it, and they love it."

But the scientists' campaign, which began in California's Silicon Valley in January, has gathered signatures from more than 300 experts, and the pressure has induced the industry to begin changing course.

Electronic terminals eliminate hanging chads, pencil erasure marks and the chance that a voter might accidentally select too many candidates. Under the new systems, voters touch the screen or turn a dial to make their choices and see a confirmation of those choices before casting their votes, which are tallied right in the terminal. Recounts are just a matter of retrieving the data from the computer again. The only record of the vote is what is stored there.

Critics of such systems say that they are vulnerable to tampering, to human error and to computer malfunctions -- and that they lack the most obvious protection, a separate, paper receipt that a voter can confirm after voting and that can be recounted if problems are suspected.

Officials who have worked with touch-screen systems say these concerns are unfounded and, in certain cases, somewhat paranoid.

David Dill, the Stanford University professor of computer science who launched the petition drive, said, "What people have learned repeatedly, the hard way, is that the prudent practice -- if you want to escape with your data intact -- is what other people would perceive as paranoia."

Other computer scientists, including Rebecca Mercuri of Bryn Mawr College, say that problems are so likely that they are virtually guaranteed to occur -- and already have.

[KriegerGeist]

Without a "hard copy" paper ballot with a record of the vote for the particular candidate such as in a magic marked ballot next to a name, then you will have fraud.

I 2000 there were electronic ballots cast in PA that were completely lost in "ee-ther space" poof! gone. No paper hard copy record.

I'm all for marking a ballot (not punching) with the name, party and perhaps even their picture on it. Then, and only then, they can be tabulated and registered through an optical scanner.

Ballotless electronic voting will be our downfall.

[philman_36]

This has been warned about before.
Seen this, sourcery?

[PISANO]

This ENTIRE thread illustrates that NO system is foolproof just LIKE no human BEING is mistake free. Voting, while a RIGHT, as with ALL RIGHTS, has RESPONSIBILITIES. If the voter can't read, or hasn't the mental capacity to figure out who he/she wants to vote for then I say TOUGH! Spoon feeding someone with foolproof systems that supposedly removes the RESPONSIBILITY from the RIGHT is ridiculous.

[ImphClinton]

Good idea. It amazes me that many states are going with machines that produce no trail thus no recount possibility. These machines also offer no way for a person to know their vote really counted.

I liked the old Lever machines that tallied the votes when you opened the curtin. They had a lever for each candidate and proposal. They almost never broke down and kept a paper record just in case.

Computers are great for a lot of things but voting is not one of them.

[boris]

He who controls the count controls the vote.

He who controls the software controls the count.

QED.

--Boris