There’s more compelling evidence that e-voting machines have so many fatal security flaws that they should be junked. Computer scientists at the University of California completed the nation’s first top-to-bottom review last month of three brands of widely used electronic touch-screen voting machines. Duplicating previous findings by their peers at Stanford, Princeton and Johns Hopkins, researchers uncovered major problems in all three brands tested.
Unable to guarantee secure elections, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen then moved to decertify all e-voting systems in use in her state, starting with next February’s presidential primary.
Even without access to proprietary source code, researchers were able to install malicious software that recorded votes incorrectly, allowed somebody with access to just one voting machine or memory card to spread a virus that infected the entire system, manipulated every setting on the election management database system, and even deleted all records of previous ballots cast. Despite these catastrophic flaws, all these machines met federal standards set by the 2002 Help Americans Vote Act. That’s not all. The company that tests voting systems was also denied accreditation by the Federal Election Assistance Commission because it could not prove it was conducting all the required tests. Researchers even found an e-voting machine for sale on eBay!
Bowen is now recommending that California localities junk $450 million worth of touch-screen machines and instead optically scan paper ballots, using open source software to centrally tabulate the votes. Heeding expert warnings against a cheap fix by merely attaching printers to compromised systems, all 50 states should do likewise. However, a bill introduced by Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., to require recountable paper records is stalling in Congress, even though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., both represent states where computer scientists have clearly demonstrated e-voting’s current unreliability.
Twenty-eight states now require a paper backup of each vote. Virginia is unfortunately not among them. In May, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed legislation requiring that all new voting machines purchased in the future include a voter-verifiable paper trail that can be audited — but even that half-measure won’t kick in until 2010.
California’s own Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D, who promised to pursue congressional action last year on this issue no matter which party won, now says that requiring voter-verified paper ballots “could be an invitation to chaos.” She’s exactly wrong; chaos will certainly ensue if the 2008 presidential election is held on touch-screen machines. In a representative democracy, getting elections right some of the time is simply not good enough.
