“Hacking” and the Paper Ballot-Optical Scan Voting System

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Wed, 25 Jan 2006 08:26:39 -0500 (EST)

" Hacking " and the Paper Ballot-Optical Scan Voting System

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http://www.nyvv.org/paperballothacking.shtml

 

" Hacking " and the Paper Ballot-Optical Scan Voting System

 

Some alarm has been expressed at learning that the recent test in

Florida that disproved the Diebold claim that its machines could not

be " hacked " was carried out on an optical scanner (Diebold's Accu-Vote

OS 1.94w). New Yorkers for Verified Voting again has been asked to

justify its support for the paper ballot-optical scan system (PBOS).

NYVV has never denied that optical scanners are computers and that

they are subject to accidental or deliberate miscoding and " hacking. "

NYVV has argued that the hand-marked paper-ballots that are the

foundation of the PBOS system provide security to elections because

the scanners can be checked by hand-counting the paper.

 

Let's be very clear that the PBOS system is far superior to direct

recording electronic voting machines (DREs) in spite of our knowledge

that scanners can be hacked. Keep in mind that scanners only count

votes; therefore they provide many fewer opportunities for miscoding

and/or hacking than do DREs, which must be programmed for recording,

verifying, and counting votes as well as for accessibility. Note that

the programming of the scanners for the one task of counting can be

transparently tested by running a test deck of ballots that have been

publicly hand-counted as many times as are necessary to convince the

observers that the scanner is correctly programmed. After an election,

the original hand-marked paper ballots are the official record and are

available for manual recounts whenever law or circumstance requires it.

 

An observer1 of the famous " Harri Hursti hack " in Florida has pointed

out that that test revealed " only one vulnerability in an almost

unlimited number of potential flaws " that computer scientists

recognize to be characteristic of electronic voting systems (both

optical scanners and DREs). Revelation of this flaw was important

because it exposed a vulnerability that must have been purposefully

programmed into the system. Most significantly, the observer's report

goes on to correctly argue that " the Hursti hack shows, above all, the

importance of having paper ballots. " The Hursti hack demonstrates that

" there must be an independent paper trail that can be manually audited

to confirm (or discredit) machine results. "

 

The PBOS system provides such a direct paper record of the voter's

intent. Voter-assistive devices allow the disabled also to mark paper

ballots. While some would prefer a system of hand-counted paper

ballots over optical-scan counting, we need to remember that politics

is the art of the possible and to seek to discover " what can and

cannot be accomplished politically at a given place and moment in

time " (Bo Lipari). Most of the election commissioners who have been

given the power to choose our voting system in New York have deep

reservations about managing elections based on paper ballots. Advocacy

of the PBOS system is politically wise inasmuch as it answers the

public's interest in rapid preliminary counts at the same time as it

promises the commissioners that they will need to count paper only for

the 3% required audits and whenever problems arise.

 

NYVV joins the Government Accountability Office in urging improved

standards and testing of all electronic voting equipment, including

optical scanners.2 Adequate testing should be able to close some of

the doors to hacking. Careful procedures and audits of hand-marked

paper ballots will take us the rest of the way to voter confidence in

the paper ballot-optical scan system.

 

Wanda Warren Berry, January 22, 2006

 

1Susan Pynchon, " The Harri Hursti Hack and its Importance to our

Nation, "

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content & task=view & id=820 & Itemid\

=113.

 

2Government Accountability Office Report, GAO-05-956, " Elections:

Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic

Voting, " Oct. 21, 2005.

 

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