http://informationweek.securitypipeline.com/news/19200043
April
23, 2004
Elections Panel
Recommends Voting Machine Ban
By
W. David Gardner, TechWeb News
A
California elections panel examining computerized voting machines has
unanimously recommended that machines using touch-screen technology be banned in some California counties. This is further
evidence that attempts across the nation to upgrade and safeguard voting
procedures won't be implemented in time for the November elections. The California Voting Systems and Procedures
Panel, Thursday, singled out Diebold Election Systems
for criticism, some of it virulent. "I'm disgusted by the actions of this
company," said Marc Carrel, a panel member, according to press reports. Diebold has been the poster boy for criticism on
computerized voting, after different voting jurisdictions criticized the firm.
"Electronic
voting machines have a long-documented history of abuse and flaws," said
David Mertz, of the Open Voting Consortium (OVV), in an interview. "The
source code needs to be public, to be open for inspection by any voter so there
is confidence." Mertz is a founding member and software architect of the
non-profit OVC's voting system.
The
OVC and a voting company, VoteHere Inc., have posted
the source code for their respective systems on Web sites so outside observers
can study the software and report any flaws. Security and privacy companies
routinely make their encryption algorithms public to encourage experts to test
the code for weaknesses.
After
the election fiasco of the 2000, voting irregularities in many states were
exposed, and Congress subsequently passed the multibillion-dollar "Help
America Vote Act" in an effort to fix the problems. Many viewed electronic
voting as a panacea, but OVC's Mertz said it's now
evident that many of the hoped-for improvements involving voting machines won't
be available for the upcoming election.
"They
[the improvements] won't be ready in time for [this] election," he said.
"And now it's not so much the coding that's the problem--it's the
certification process." Voting jurisdictions must certify voting
procedures that are usually time-consuming and require third-party auditing.
At
the California hearing, panel members complained that Diebold
had sold counties software that never received state and federal certification.
The widespread fear is that uncertified software is susceptible to tampering by
hackers. When Professor Aviel Rubin, of John Hopkins
University, analyzed Diebold voting-machine code
several months ago, he said he found flaws. Like many experts in the field,
Rubin has urged that auditable election machines be produced.
The
California panel recommended that some Diebold
machine models be banned from the November elections. Diebold
denied the allegations against it, and a company spokesman said he will prepare
a report outlining its objections and present it to the panel.
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