Technical Problems Plague E-Voting

I've been saying it for months - electronic voting machines are a huge threat to American democracy:

Electronic voting made its debut in cities and towns from
Maryland to California on Tuesday as election officials beefed up
security for the record number of voters expected to cast E-ballots for
the first time.
[...]
Overall, some 10 million people in at least two dozen states were
expected to cast ballots in primaries this year on machines built by
Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems, Electronic Systems & Software and
other vendors. And the electronic voting trend is accelerating: In
November's presidential election, at least 50 million people will vote
on touch-screens, compared with 55 million using paper, punch cards or
lever machines, according to Washington-based Election Data Services.
One Maryland polling place had to switch to paper ballots Tuesday
because its new electronic voting machines didn't work. State elections
supervisor Linda Lamone said technicians expected to have the problem
fixed quickly. Voters also had to start out using paper ballots in
Georgia's Effingham County. Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Secretary of
State Cathy Cox, said county officials apparently forgot to program the
encoders � devices used to tell ballot access cards, which voters
insert into the machines, what ballot to display. A security issue also
arose in Georgia. Georgia Tech student Peter Sahlstrom said he found 10
Diebold terminals sitting unprotected in the lobby of the school's
student center Monday. Sahlstrom, 22, photographed the machines in
their unlocked cases. "Frankly, this makes me nervous and ... it
validates a lot of the concerns I already had," Sahlstrom said in a
phone interview.
[...]
"The modernization of the nation's voting infrastructure is long
overdue," said Alfie Charles, spokesman for Oakland-based Sequoia,
which built the machines being used by as many as 4 million voters in
California and Maryland. But computer scientists have been protesting
the switch. They're particularly concerned that few of the computers
provide paper records, making it nearly impossible to have meaningful
recounts, or to prove that vote tampering hasn't occurred. Politicians,
voter-rights advocates and even some secretaries of state have
acknowledged that the systems could theoretically fail � with
catastrophic consequences.
In several software and hardware tests, critics have shown it's easy to
jam microchip-embedded smart cards into machines, or alter and delete
some votes � in some cases simply by ripping out wires. They've
cracked passwords to gain access to computer servers and showed that
some systems relying on Microsoft Windows lacked up-to-date security
patches that should have been downloaded from the Internet. California
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley directed elections officials last
month to bolster security in 12 counties using touch-screens. Those
counties account for about 41 percent of California's registered
voters. Shelley also wants independent, random tests of touch-screen
machines. Maryland, which spent $55.6 million on 16,000 touch-screen
computers earlier this year, also took precautions. Computer experts
told Maryland lawmakers in January that the hardware contained
"vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious individuals."
Among their surprises: all of Maryland's machines had two identical
locks, which could be opened by any one of 32,000 keys or be easily
picked.

For a more in-depth look at how incredibly dangerous electronic voting machines are, click here.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 2, 2004 at 03:16 PM | Permalink