http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120601518.html?referrer=emailarticle
States Face a Jan. 1 Deadline to Meet Reliability
Standards
By Brian Bergstein
Associated Press
Wednesday, December 7, 2005; A23
The potential perils of electronic voting systems are
bedeviling state officials as a Jan. 1 deadline approaches for complying with
standards for the machines' reliability.
Across the country, officials are trying multiple methods to
ensure that touch-screen voting machines can record and count votes without
falling prey to software bugs, hackers, malicious insiders or other ills.
These are not theoretical problems -- in some states they
have led to lost or miscounted votes.
One of the biggest concerns -- the frequent inability of
computerized ballots to produce a written receipt of a vote -- has been
addressed or is being tackled in most states.
An October report from the Government Accountability Office
predicted that steps to improve the reliability of electronic voting "are
unlikely to have a significant effect" in the 2006 off-year elections,
partly because certification procedures remain a work in progress.
"There's not a lot of precedents in dealing with these
electronic systems, so people are slowly figuring out the best way to do
this," said Thad E. Hall, a political scientist at the University of Utah
and co-author of "Point, Click, and Vote: The Future of Internet
Voting."
In North Carolina, more stringent requirements -- which
include placing the machines' software code in escrow for examination in case
of a problem -- have led one supplier, Diebold Inc., to say it will withdraw
from the state, where about 20 counties use Diebold voting machines.
A different type of showdown is brewing in California, where
Secretary of State Bruce McPherson says he might force makers of the machines
to prove their systems can withstand attacks from a hacker. One such test on a
Diebold system -- Diebold machines were blamed for voting disruptions in a 2004
California primary -- is planned.
The state has been negotiating details with Harri Hursti, a
security expert from Finland who uncovered severe flaws in a Diebold system
used in Leon County, Fla. (He demonstrated how vote results could be changed,
then made screens flash "Are we having fun yet?")
Similarly, elections officials in Franklin County, Ohio --
where older voting machines gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a
preliminary count in 2004 -- recently asked computer experts to test newly
purchased touch-screen voting machines from Election Systems and Software Inc.
Such designated hack attempts might be a flawed approach,
because a failure proves only that a particular hacker could not break into a
machine under certain conditions. That is not the same as opening things up to
a broader group of researchers, as software developers sometimes do. Many
critics of touch-screen election computers argue that the software should be
publicly examined to make sure vote tampering could not occur.
A McPherson spokeswoman said the hacking test would be one
of many factors in deciding whether to approve the voting machines. McPherson
has released a 10-point plan for certification efforts, including a software
code escrow system.
The scrutiny is likely to make California miss a Jan. 1
deadline set under the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002.
That law was aimed at phasing out the punch-card ballots and
other old-fashioned systems that proved problematic in 2000. It requires states
to improve disability access at polling places in addition to standardizing
electronic voting systems.
A report by Election Data Services Inc., a political
consulting firm, for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission determined that 23
percent of American voters used electronic ballots in 2004, a 12 percent
increase over 2000.
Since then, largely because of warnings from computer
security experts and grass-roots activism, many states have began requiring the
machines to produce paper receipts that voters can examine. At least 25 states
have such rules and 14 more have requirements pending, according to the
Verified Voting Foundation.
"There's a long way to go -- making our elections truly
trustworthy in this country is a multifaceted problem," said David L.
Dill, a Stanford University computer scientist and founder of the
[www.verifiedvoting.org] foundation. But he added that he expected a "much
better situation in 2006" and noted that improving electronic voting has
become "a delightfully nonpartisan issue."
Manufacturers insist that their voting machines are reliable
and that critics have made too much of isolated problems.
"Anytime there's an issue that happens with a
particular voting system, all vendors are painted with the same broad
brush," said Michelle Shafer, a spokeswoman for Sequoia Voting Systems
Inc. "There are differences from product to product. You need to look at
the track record of particular companies."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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