Voting machines' reliability debated

By John Strauss
Indianapolis Star

September 19, 2004
 

Nearly half the state's voters including thousands in the Indianapolis metro area will head to the polls this fall to use voting machines criticized as unreliable in a fierce debate over accuracy and security.

The machines are one link in the Election Day chain of voter lists, ballots, poll workers and officials who help citizens choose their elected officials.

But questions remain in Indiana and nationally about the security of computerized voting machines.

Electronic touch-screen voting has made greater inroads here than in the rest of the country, where the method is in use by about a third of voters.

But the machines, on which candidates are ed from a computer screen, have failed in several states, including California, Georgia and Maryland.

And a nationally recognized computer security expert from Purdue University said more failures and even computerized voter fraud are possible.

"We've been trying to raise the alarm for over a year now," said Professor Eugene Spafford, director of the school's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security.

"There are a whole lot of spots in these systems where either an error or actual malicious behavior can alter the count," he said.

Spafford, a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, said he's concerned that undetected problems could cause errors in vote totals.

"The problem is that the software on the machines does a count. And there is no way for the voter to tell for certain that the vote they think they are casting is actually being counted that way," he said.

Forty-three Indiana counties, representing 49 percent of the state's voters, use touch-screen systems, also known as direct record electronic voting, according to the Indiana secretary of state's office, which administers elections.

In the metro area, the systems are used in Boone, Hamilton, Hendricks and Morgan counties.

Marion County bought touch- screen machines for disabled voters but will not use them in November because the system's software was not approved by the state in time, said County Clerk Doris Anne Sadler, a Republican.

Marion County voters and those in Hancock County use ballot cards that are scanned and tabulated electronically. That method allows computer tabulation of results but also produces paper records the original ballots that can be recounted, Sadler said.

"I think the main concern (with touch-screen systems) is that there is no voter-verifiable paper trail which is why Marion County went with the optical scan system," she said.

"We wanted something to count. Marion County is close enough (in the numbers of Democrats and Republicans) that we're going to have recounts in every election."

Sadler predicted that touch-screen makers eventually will add printers to their machines. In that type of system, after the voter casts an electronic ballot, a printer would produce a receipt. The voter would check that the machine correctly registered the ballot ions and then give the receipt to poll workers.

Later, if a recount is needed, the paper receipts can be compared with the electronically tabulated numbers.

Election Systems & Software Inc. of Omaha, Neb., sells touch-screen and other voting systems that count the votes in about half of the country's precincts.

Johnson County began using the company's iVotronic machines last year.

Company spokeswoman Becky Vollmer said those machines do not allow access by Internet, phone lines or direct networking, meaning they are protected from outside manipulation.

"We feel very strongly that our equipment is very accurate," Vollmer said.

The company says its equipment and software is rigorously tested for flaws.

The machines could eventually be modified to include voter-verified receipts, Vollmer said, but election officials have established no standards yet.

Microvote General Corp. of Indianapolis makes the computer voting machines used in Boone, Hamilton, Hendricks and Morgan counties.

"Electronic voting isn't something that just happened," said company President Jim Ries Jr. "We've been making these machines since 1982, and you can imagine there was a great concern about security then."

Ries called voter-verified receipts "ridiculous."

"I've never seen one shred of evidence that supported any of their allegations," he said of electronic-voting opponents.

Republican Secretary of State Todd Rokita, the state's chief election officer, said critics of electronic voting overlook the rigid testing the systems undergo.

"They cannot point to one election in which it's been shown that these machines were intentionally manipulated to skew the results," he said.

"No technology is infallible. But to use scare tactics without any evidence in the field that (fraud) has happened is irresponsible."

Just to be sure, Rokita said he supports additional testing of voting machines by universities in Indiana.