Will Your Vote Count in 2006?

[Guest guest]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12888600/site/newsweek/ Will Your Vote Count in

2006?'When you're using a paperless voting system, there is no security,' says

Stanford's David Dill.

By Steven Levy

Newsweek

 

May 29, 2006 issue - Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the

voting booth, here comes more disturbing news about the trustworthiness of

electronic touchscreen ballot machines. Earlier this month a report by Finnish

security expert Harri Hursti analyzed Diebold voting machines for an

organization called Black Box Voting. Hursti found unheralded vulnerabilities in

the machines that are currently entrusted to faithfully record the votes of

millions of Americans.

How bad are the problems? Experts are calling them the most serious

voting-machine flaws ever documented. Basically the trouble stems from the ease

with which the machine's software can be altered. It requires only a few minutes

of pre-election access to a Diebold machine to open the machine and insert a PC

card that, if it contained malicious code, could reprogram the machine to give

control to the violator. The machine could go dead on Election Day or throw

votes to the wrong candidate. Worse, it's even possible for such

ballot-tampering software to trick authorized technicians into thinking that

everything is working fine, an illusion you couldn't pull off with

pre-electronic systems. " If Diebold had set out to build a system as insecure as

they possibly could, this would be it, " says Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins

University computer-science professor and elections-security expert.

Diebold Election Systems spokesperson David Bear says Hursti's findings do not

represent a fatal vulnerability in Diebold technology, but simply note the

presence of a feature that allows access to authorized technicians to

periodically update the software. If it so happens that someone not supposed to

use the machine—or an election official who wants to put his or her thumb on the

scale of democracy—takes advantage of this fast track to fraud, that's not

Diebold's problem. " [Our critics are] throwing out a 'what if' that's premised

on a basis of an evil, nefarious person breaking the law, " says Bear.

Those familiar with the actual election process—by and large run by honest

people but historically subject to partisan politicking, dirty tricks and sloppy

practices—are less sanguine. " It gives me a bit of alarm that the voting systems

are subject to tampering and errors, " says Democratic Rep. William Lacy Clay,

who worries that machines in his own St. Louis district might be affected by

this vulnerability. (In Maryland and Georgia, all the machines are Diebold's.)

The Diebold security gap is only the most vivid example of the reality that no

electronic voting system can be 100 percent safe or reliable. That's the reason

behind an initiative to augment these systems, adding a paper receipt that

voters can check to make sure it conforms with their choices. The receipt is

retained at the polling place so a physical count can be conducted. " When you're

using a paperless voting system, there is no security, " says David Dill, a

Stanford professor who founded the election-reform organization Verified Voting.

To their credit, 26 states have taken action to implement paper trails. But the

U.S. Congress has yet to pass legislation introduced last year by Rep. Rush

Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, that would extend this protection nationwide. Holt

says his bill is slowly gaining support. " The voters are saying that every vote

should count, and the only way to do this is by verified audit trails, " he says.

But even an optimistic scenario for passage would challenge his goal of

mandatory paper receipts for November's elections. In other words, it's unlikely

that every voter using an electronic voting device in 2006 will know for sure

that his or her vote will be reflected in the actual totals. Six years after the

2000 electoral debacle, how can this be?

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc. | Subscribe to Newsweek

 

 

 

" To be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to

make me everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being

can fight, and never stop fighting. " -e.e. cummings-