Fear of hackers plagues computer voting system

By Caroline Overington, Herald Correspondent in New York
February 17, 2004

Elections used to be rigged, but that is so yesterday. In the future, elections will be hacked.

So say computer experts, who believe that the US's new touch-screen voting machines are vulnerable to cyber-fraud. The machines are supposed to replace the punch-card voting machines that failed so spectacularly during the 2000 presidential election.

About 50 million Americans - or 29 per cent of registered voters - will use the new technology when they vote for president in November.

This includes 59 per cent of voters in Florida, the centre of the 2000 dispute. One of the main suppliers, Diebold, said its machines are virtually hack-proof and a "dramatic improvement" on the old punch-card machines. But when the state of Maryland asked a bunch of computer experts to try to hack its Diebold machines, they did so with ease.

One tester took just 10 seconds to hack a machine and change the results. Off-site hackers needed fewer than 60 seconds to get access via a modem and fictitious numbers.

Computer experts at Johns Hopkins University, led by Aviel Rubin, have concluded that Diebold's machines are "vulnerable to tampering". Professor Rubin said "history has shown that when people have the opportunity to tamper with an election, they do".

Diebold has recently d its machines and said they are now the "most secure and accurate election system in the history of democracy". It also revealed that Professor Rubin, its leading critic, has links to one of its competitors, VoteHere.

Diebold has also come under fire for its links to President George Bush. Its chief executive, Walden O'Dell, has pledged to raise $US100,000 ($126,000) for his election campaign. He recently told a group of Republicans in Ohio that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President".

The first state to vote completely on touch-screens will be Georgia. Its secretary of state, Cathy Cox, said critics of the machines were "very intelligent people who have absolutely no knowledge of elections". She conceded that there was no such thing as a "perfect piece of machinery" but said Georgia's voting machines were "virtually impossible to tamper with".

Ms Cox said Mr O'Dell's statement supporting Mr Bush was "about as stupid a thing as I can imagine" a CEO saying, but "do I still like their product? Yes".

About 94,000 of Georgian votes did not count towards the last presidential election because of problems with the scanners, punch cards, level machines and paper ballots that the state used. Diebold says its studies show that voters who use touch-screen machines make fewer errors.

But David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, said: "I don't think there's any reason to trust these machines." He wants manufacturers to add a printer so voters can review their vote. Georgia is resisting, saying voters already get to review their vote on screen. Besides, if they see a mistake, how could they recast the vote?

Other states, including California, have installed printers.