Electronic-Vote Critics Urge Changes to System
Wed Sep 22, 2004 Reuters

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Voting activists on Wednesday enlisted computer experts, a trained monkey and a man on a hunger strike in a last-minute pitch to convince officials to improve the security of electronic vote-counting systems.

With six weeks to go before the Nov. 2 presidential election, activists said officials still have time to set up a paper trail as a counterweight to an electronic voting system they portrayed as wide open to manipulation.

"It's not too late; there are some security measures we can put in place," said Bev Harris, executive director of the activist group Black Box Voting.

The debate over electronic voting has largely centered on touch-screen systems like Diebold Inc.'s AccuVote-TS, which will be used by roughly one in three voters this November.

But a far greater threat is posed by the software used to tabulate votes on the county level, which counts not only electronic votes but those cast using traditional paper-based methods, Harris and others said.

"The touch-screen machines that we've been focusing our attention on, they're just the tip of the iceberg," said Joan Krawitz, co-founder of the National Ballot Integrity Project.

At a press conference, computer-security experts demonstrated what they said were flaws in tabulating software made by Diebold and Sequoia Voting Systems.

Experts showed ways they could alter vote totals without a password, record a vote for one candidate as a vote for another, or simply erase the vote totals completely.

'NOT REAL-WORLD'

They also showed a video of a chimpanzee hitting two computer keys "" and "enter" to erase records that vote totals had been altered.

Diebold and Sequoia spokesmen said people were unlikely to get access to make any changes, and any attempts to alter the vote would be caught by security procedures already in place. 

"It's not a real-world scenario," said Sequoia spokesman Alfie Charles. "It's unfortunate that they use disingenuous tactics to try to frighten the electorate this close to an election."

But Harris remains unconvinced. "I have yet to find a computer professional anywhere who says this is an adequate design, an acceptable design, or a design that makes any sense," she said.

A pale-looking man named John Kenny said he was on a hunger strike until the election to publicize the issue. He said he had lost 12 pounds so far.

While it is too late to fix such flaws, officials should ensure that they have a paper backup of vote counts on every level, Harris and other activists said.

Officials should print up paper ballots rather than relying on touch-screen systems, and print out vote totals in each precinct and deliver them by hand to make sure centralized vote-counting computers are working properly, they said.

Congress has authority to force local officials to improve their procedures if they are reluctant to do so, they said.

But it has so far shown little interest in voting security, and bills that would require touch-screen systems to print out votes have failed to make it out of the committee level.