http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-12-15-opticalvoting_x.htm
County
says electronic voting machines can be hacked
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Tests on an optical-scan voting
system used around the country showed it is vulnerable to hacking that can
change the outcome of races without leaving evidence of fraud, a county
election supervisor said.
The voting system maker, Diebold Inc., sent a letter in
response that questioned the test results and said the test was "a very
foolish and irresponsible act" that may violated licensing agreements.
Company spokesman David Bear did not return a phone call
from The Associated Press seeking comment Thursday. Diebold's letter was
written by its senior lawyer, Michael Lindroos, and sent to the state of
Florida, Leon County and the county election supervisor, Ion Sancho.
Optical-scan machines use paper ballots where voters fill in
bubbles to mark their candidates. The ballots are then fed into scanners that
record the selections.
In one of the tests conducted for Sancho and the non-profit
election-monitoring group BlackBoxVoting.org, the researchers were able to get
into the system easily, make the loser the winner and leave without a trace,
said Herbert Thompson, who conducted the test.
He also said the machine that tabulates the overall count
asked for a user name and password, but didn't require it.
In the other test, the researcher who had hacked into the
voting machine's memory card was able to hide votes, make losers out of winners
and leave no trace of the changes, said BlackBox founder Bev Harris. The memory
card records the votes of one machine, then is taken to a central location
where results are totaled.
Sancho criticized the Florida Secretary of State's Office,
which approves the voting systems used in the state, for not catching the
alleged problems.
A spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office said any
faults Sancho found were between him and Diebold.
"If Ion Sancho has security concerns with his system,
he needs to discuss them with Diebold," spokeswoman Jenny Nash said.
The Miami Herald reported Thursday that Sancho scraped
Leon's Diebold machines this week for a voting system from another
manufacturer.
Many Florida counties switched to computer-based elections
systems after the 2000 presidential election, when the cardboard punchcard
ballots then in use were plagued by incomplete and multiple punches.
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