Florida test shows e-vote fraud possible-Voter tallies can be changed, manipula

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Test shows voter fraud is possible

Machines are vulnerable to manipulation

 

By Tony Bridges

 

DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

 

 

All it takes is the right access.

 

Get that, and an election worker could manipulate voting results in

the computers that read paper ballots - without leaving any digital

fingerprints.

 

That was the verdict after Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho

invited a team of researchers to look for holes in election software.

 

The group wasn't able to crack the Diebold system from outside the

office. But, at the computer itself, they changed vote tallies,

completely unrecorded.

 

Sancho said it illustrates the need for tight physical security, as

well as a paper trail that can verify results, which the Legislature

has rejected.

 

Black Box Voting, the non-profit that ran the test and published a

report on the Internet, pointed to the findings as proof of an

elections system clearly vulnerable to corruption.

 

But state officials in charge of overseeing elections pooh-poohed the

test process and dismissed the group's report.

 

" Information on a blog site is not viable or credible, " said Jenny

Nash, a spokeswoman for the Department of State.

 

It went like this:

 

Sancho figured Leon County's security could withstand just about any

sort of probing and wanted to prove it.

 

He went to one of the most skeptical - and vocal - watchdogs of

election procedures. Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, had

experience with voting machines across the country.

 

She recruited two computer-security experts and made the trip to

Tallahassee from her home in Washington state three times between

February and late May.

 

Leon County is one of 30 counties in Florida that use Diebold optical

scanners. Voters darken bubbles on a sheet of paper, sort of like

filling in the answers on the SAT, and the scanners read them and add

up the numbers.

 

So the task was simple. Get in, tamper with vote numbers, and get out

clean.

 

They made their first attempts from outside the building. No success.

 

Then, they sat down at the vote-counting computers, the sort of access

to the machines an employee might have. For the crackers, security

protocols were no problem, passwords unnecessary.

 

They simply went around them.

 

After that, the security experts accomplished two things that should

not have been possible.

 

They made 65,000 votes disappear simply by changing the real memory

card - which stores the numbers - for one that had been altered.

 

And, while the software is supposed to create a record whenever

someone makes changes to data stored in the system, it showed no

evidence they'd managed to access and change information.

 

When they were done, they printed the poll tapes. Those are paper

records, like cash register tape, that show the official numbers on

the memory cards.

 

Two tapes, with different results. And the only way to tell the fake one?

 

At the bottom, it read, " Is this real? Or is it Memorex? "

 

" That was troubling, " Sancho said.

 

Leon County more secure

 

A disaster?

 

Not exactly.

 

In Leon County, access to the machines is strictly controlled, limited

to a single employee. The memory cards are kept locked away, and

they're tracked by serial number.

 

Those precautions help prevent any tampering.

 

" You've got to have security over the individual who's accessing the

system, " Sancho said. In fact, " you've got to have good security and

control over every step of this process. "

 

The trouble is, not every county is as closely run.

 

In Volusia County, her group has found what they think was memory-card

tampering during the 2000 election. More than 16,000 votes for Al Gore

vanished.

 

Harris said her research turned up memos - obtained from the elections

supervisor's office - that blamed the failure on an extra memory card

that showed up, and disappeared, without explanation.

 

She believes that was an attempt to change the outcome of the

election, but one carried out clumsily. The test in Leon County proved

it was possible, if done by more experienced computer programmers, she

said.

 

So what does the Department of State say?

 

Nash, the spokeswoman, said that the Diebold systems were designed to

be used in secure settings, and that, by giving the testers direct

access to the computers, Sancho had basically allowed them to bypass

security.

 

In other words, not much of a test.

 

Except that the security experts were given only as much opportunity

as any other election worker would have. Less so, considering that

Sancho did not provide them with passwords or any other way to

actually get into the programming.

 

As for the exact vulnerabilities that Harris reported - and Sancho

confirmed - Nash said no one from the state could comment, since they

hadn't been present at the test.

 

She added later that Sancho could request help from state certifiers

if he had concerns, but had not asked yet.

 

To read the entire report, visit

http://www.BlackBoxVoting.org.

 

Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections, will post a summary of the test

results this weekend at www.leonfl.org/elect/

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/11811936.htm