Voting machines a huge gamble on Election Day

OP-ED in Miami Herald   05 August 2004

Within the mad cacophony of a Vegas casino corny music, flashing lights, rows of slots singing: cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching bettors enjoy protections not yet extended to voters. Regulators have their priorities for safeguarding the integrity of computer terminals that cater to the masses. Those priorities aren't about voting.

''It would be too easy to say that money is more important than votes,'' said Nelson Rose, Whittier Law School professor and an expert in gambling regulation. ``But the gambling industry, where every dollar counts, has every possible safeguard in place. Politicians don't think that way about votes.''

Joanie Jacka of the Nevada Gaming Control Board described Wednesday how state technicians dissect slot machines, check software, inspect computer chips, pore over the source code and constantly slot machine standards.

The Gaming Board dispatches teams of technicians to the casinos, each armed with laptop computers that plug into slot machines and test them for accuracy. ''Every gaming device in the state is inspected,'' Jacka insisted.

If a constitutional amendment that would allow slots at South Florida's parimutuel tracks and frontons is approved by voters this fall, those gambling devices will likely undergo a testing regimen modeled after Nevada's, said Earl Bender, chairman of the parimutuel association that has pushed the amendment. Bender said parimutuels see tough Nevada-style regulation as a guarantee to bettors that their interests will be protected.

If only Florida voters had the same guarantee.

TOUCH-SCREEN SECRETS

The source codes that run the touch-screen computers are the manufacturer's secret. The secretary of state's office has demonstrated scant expertise in overseeing the new machines, missing major software glitches. No state testing regimen is in place. No state techies regularly examine the machines.

The slipshod way we run our democracy would be utterly unacceptable at the racetrack.

''It's compelling to know that [state regulators] won't let slot machine manufacturers operate unless they reveal their source code, whereas the manufacturers of voting machines won't let anybody in the world see their source code,'' said Fred Havenick, president of Flagler Greyhound Track in Miami. ``As a voter, I find that unacceptable.''

Havenick pointed out that computerized machines that record bets at the track undergo far more scrutiny than voting machines do. Tote machines even make internal paper printouts, he noted, which remain sealed and protected until they are delivered to Tallahassee.

''The state does a better job of regulating gambling than elections,'' Havenick said.

''But there's no doubt that if the states wanted to spend the money, they could make voting machines at least as secure as slot machines,'' Rose said. The gambling industry and the state gambling regulators, he said, have been worried for years about tampering and cheating.

He noted that slots come with operating systems far more complicated than the computers in touch-screen voting machines.

GAMBLING SAFEGUARDS

Florida already oversees computerized parimutuel betting. And the state manages to keep hackers from breaking into its Lotto terminals. That expertise just hasn't been extended to voting.

Bill Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, said that in the mid-1990s a technician was able to add a few lines to the source code of a certain make of slot machines and, until he was caught, had collected nearly $50,000.

Eadington offered the story as a cautionary tale. Some skilled cheat just might add a few lines to our under-protected voting machine code, ensuring a different kind of jackpot come Election Day.

Cha-ching! Cha-ching!