New tests fuel doubts about vote machines

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Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:02:52 -0800 (PST)

New tests fuel doubts about vote machines

Posted on Thu, Dec. 15, 2005

 

 

 

ELECTIONS

 

New tests fuel doubts about vote machines

A top election official and computer experts say

computer hackers could easily change election results,

after they found numerous flaws with a state-approved

voting-machine in Tallahassee.

BY MARC CAPUTO AND GARY FINEOUT

mcaputo

 

TALLAHASSEE - A political operative with hacking

skills could alter the results of any election on

Diebold-made voting machines -- and possibly other new

voting systems in Florida -- according to the state

capital's election supervisor, who said Diebold

software has failed repeated tests.

 

Ion Sancho, Leon County's election chief, said tests

by two computer experts, completed this week, showed

that an insider could surreptitiously change vote

results and the number of ballots cast on Diebold's

optical-scan machines.

 

After receiving county commission approval Tuesday,

Sancho scrapped Diebold's system for one made by

Elections Systems and Software, the same provider used

by Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The difference

between the systems: Sancho's machines use a

fill-in-the-blank paper ballot that allows for

after-the-fact manual recounts, while Broward and

Miami-Dade use ATM-like touchscreens that leave no

paper trail.

 

''That's kind of scary. If there's no paper trail, you

have to rely solely on electronic results. And now we

know that they can be manipulated under the right

conditions, without a person even leaving a

fingerprint,'' said Sancho, who once headed the

state's elections supervisors association.

 

The Leon County test results are likely to further

fuel suspicions that the new electronic voting systems

in Florida, in place since the 2002 elections, are

susceptible to manipulation.

 

When the debate hit fever pitch before last year's

presidential election, many conservatives said

questions about the machinery were a liberal ploy to

undermine confidence in the voting system.

 

Elections chiefs in Broward and Miami-Dade said

Wednesday they have good security and are not

particularly concerned -- though both have had

''glitches'' that have been tough to explain.

 

Sancho agrees that good security is key, but said he's

not sure he won't also have problems with the $1.3

million ES & S system, which he'll also test.

 

DIEBOLD USERS

 

Twenty-nine counties, including Monroe, use different

versions of paper-ballot voting systems manufactured

by Diebold, a leading manufacturer of security systems

and voting machines. One county uses Diebold

touchscreens.

 

A spokesman for Diebold Election Systems Inc. could

not be reached for comment Wednesday.

 

Sancho said Diebold isn't the only one to blame for

hacker-prone equipment. The Florida secretary of

state's office should have caught these problems early

on, he said, and the Legislature should scrap a law

severely restricting recounts on touch-screen machines

and equip them with the means of producing a paper

trail.

 

A spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office said

any faults Sancho found were between him and Diebold.

 

''If Ion Sancho has security concerns with his system,

he needs to discuss them with Diebold,'' spokeswoman

Jenny Nash said.

 

Sancho first clashed with Diebold in May, when he

teamed up with a nonprofit election-monitoring group

called BlackBoxVoting.org, which has made a crusade of

showing that electronic voting machines are subject to

fraud. BlackBox hired Herbert Thompson, a

computer-science professor and strategist at Security

Innovation, which tests software for companies such as

Google and Microsoft.

 

Thompson couldn't hack into the system from the

outside. So Sancho gave him access to the central

machine that tabulates votes and to the last school

election at Leon County High.

 

Thompson told The Herald he was ''shocked'' at how

easy it was to get in, make the loser the winner and

leave without a trace. The machine asked for a user

name and password, but didn't require it, he said.

That meant it had not just a ''front door, but a back

door as big as a garage,'' Thompson said.

 

From there, Thompson said, he typed five lines of

computer code -- and switched 5,000 votes from one

candidate to another.

 

''I am positive an eighth grader could do this,''

Thompson said.

 

After BlackBox and Sancho announced the results,

Diebold's senior lawyer, Michael Lindroos, wrote

Sancho, Leon County and the state of Florida

questioning the results and calling the test ''a very

foolish and irresponsible act'' that may have violated

licensing agreements.

 

Over the past few months, computer expert Harri Hursti

tried to manipulate election results with the memory

card inserted into each Diebold voting machine. The

card records votes during an election, then at the end

of the day is taken to a central location where

results are totaled.

 

Hursti figured out how to hack into the memory card by

using an agricultural scanning device easily available

on the Internet, said BlackBox founder Bev Harris. He

learned how to hide votes, make losers out of winners

and leave no trace, she said.

 

Hursti couldn't be reached for comment.

 

With some variation, both Miami-Dade and Broward use

these cartridge-like cards to record votes and report

election results. Experts like Thompson say they

believe the counties could be subject to electronic

ballot-rigging -- which would be hard to detect and

correct without a paper trail.

 

FINAL TEST

 

Sancho said he tried to discuss the problems with

Diebold, but met with resistance. On Monday, he did

one final test with Hursti at the Leon County

supervisor's office, Hursti hacked the memory card to

spit out seven ''yes'' votes on an issue and one

''no'' vote.

 

Then, six ''no'' votes and two ''yes'' votes were cast

into the machine the same way voters would. Those

results didn't show up in the final tally -- just the

ones hacked into the card.

 

Officials for ES & S, which makes the systems used in

Miami-Dade and Broward counties, couldn't be reached

for comment Wednesday.

 

Seth Kaplan, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade elections

office, said officials continually monitor the quality

and security of their machines.

 

''The problem of election fraud predates current

technology by hundreds of years. We have people we

trust and in our case we have checks to reconcile the

results,'' Kaplan said.

 

But Broward's election supervisor, Brenda Snipes, said

she's at least intrigued. She, too, vouches for her

office's security, but says there's a need to remain

vigilant.

 

''Is hacking possible? We think we have a secure

system. With technology, those people who have that

level of expertise, I guess that could be possible,''

Snipes said. ``We need to see what Ion did. He tries a

lot of things. He's always analyzing things.''

 

But Sancho said the time for passive monitoring is

over. The Diebold problems show that simple tests

haven't been done on at least one major voting system,

he said.

 

''These were sold as safe systems. They passed tests

as safe systems,'' Sancho said. ``But even in the

so-called safe system, if you don't follow the paper

ballots, there is a way to rig the election. Except

it's not a bunch of guys stuffing ballots in a

precinct. It's possibly one person acting in secret

changing thousands of votes in a second.''

 

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