Voting via computer not ideal, engineer says

By Amy L. Ashbridge

Staff Writer

ONEONTA — Voters shouldn't trust their votes to machines without a paper record, a software designer said Monday night.

Bo Lipari, an engineer from Ithaca and the coordinator of New Yorkers for Verifiable Voting, presented a lecture and question-and-answer session on electronic voting machines at the State University College at Oneonta's Hunt Union.

"We're running rather headlong into an age of privatized computerized voting," Lipari said.

Direct recording electronic machines include paperless machines — those machines without a paper record — and voter-verifiable, paper-trail machines.

"Paperless machines are the ones we need most to worry about," Lipari said.

 
Voters and election officials will have to put exclusive trust in the machines, he said.

"Without any of these paper records, we're now relying on DRE software to be perfect," Lipari said. "It is impossible to write perfect software."

States must convert to electronic machines by 2006 because of a piece of legislation passed after the 2000 presidential election, Lipari said.

"Congress said, 'Let's fix that. Let's fix that with computerized voting,'" he said.

Lipari said paperless machines present myriad problems. Potential trouble spots include bugs, hackers, inadequate testing and weak security.

"No software ships without bugs in it," Lipari said.

Additionally, if someone wanted to hack into voting software, they could, he said. He mentioned a report in Maryland that looked for hackers.

"The machines will count voters correctly if they are not hacked," Lipari said of the report.

Using machines with a paper record is a better option, Lipari said. Though voters will use an electronic machine, there will still be a paper ballot.

"Citizens need to have confidence in their votes," he said.

Internet voting is not a viable option, Lipari said.

"Internet voting is incredibly insecure," he said. "It's far too vulnerable to hackers."

Last week, the Department of Defense ped a $22 million project that would have allowed Americans living overseas to vote via the Internet in November's election.

Lipari said there is pressure to move quickly to computerized voting and he was concerned people could lose votes if machines failed.

"What we're faced with today is a voting-rights struggle," he said. "One person. One vote. Nothing more fundamental than that."

The 7:30 p.m. lecture was attended by a mix of college students and community members. It was co-sponsored by the college's political science club and department, Democracy Matters and Citizens' Alternative Voice.

The government shouldn't leap to fix a system that isn't broken, said elections inspector William Swain.

Swain, from Oneonta, attended Monday's lecture.

"I just feel that the current system we have is secure," he said.

Swain said putting electronic machines into use would cost local governments money. He said he also didn't like the idea of machines tallying and reporting votes immediately.

Internet voting isn't the way to go, he said.

"We should continue having people that want the vote, having to come to the polls and vote," he said.

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Amy Ashbridge can be reached at aashbridge@thedailystar.com or (607) 432-1000, ext. 213 or (800) 721-1000, ext. 213.