Computers won't get a vote of confidence

J. D. Mullane    PhillyBurbs   30 June 2005

If, after attending this week's "Voting Integrity Forum" at the county courthouse, you believe the gravest threat to democracy is the computerized voting machine, who could blame you?

The machines are as easily manipulated as Enron's accounting books, according to a distinguished panel of computer nerds.

Teresa Hommel, a corporate trainer in computer technology, demonstrated how, after some simple tampering with the software, you can vote for a candidate - even obtain a receipt proving it - but the computer tosses your vote to the opponent, who wins.

"With a computer, what's on the touch screen, what's on the receipt, and what's in the computer are three different things," Hommel said, scaring many of the middle-aged election volunteers in the audience.

Computerized banana republicanism could come to your polling place, thanks to the Help America Vote Act. The law was passed by Congress in 2002 to prevent a repeat of the Florida mess that hamstrung the 2000 presidential election, which Bush won by a teensy 537 votes.

The feds will shell out billions to help county governments "upgrade" old-style voting systems, like the lever voting machines Bucks County has used since the 1950s.

While the law does not require that old-timey voting systems be replaced with computers, manufacturers of the sleek, electronic touch-screen voting machines have been getting local governments to buy, buy, buy. In 2004, 30 percent of Americans cast their votes on computers.

"You can make computers do whatever you them to do," Rebecca Mercuri said gravely. Mercuri, formerly of Lower Makefield, is a Radcliff Institute Fellow at Harvard University and a computer expert.

Given my understanding of computers doesn't go much beyond the on/off switch, I pay attention when someone with distinguished credentials like that speaks on the issue. Still, no one from the voting machine companies was invited to rebut the allegations. Suspicious.
  

I talked to Alfie Charles, spokesman for Sequoia Voting Systems, a company that the computer nerds dumped on.

Sequoia had 52,000 machines in polling places across the country in the 2004 election, the most of any of the electronic voting machine manufacturers. Charles said the starkest difference between electronic voting and easily hacked desktop computers is that voting machines aren't "networked."

"For someone to attempt an attack, they would have to break into locked and sealed compartments of each machine, reverse-engineer the software, put it back in there in the presence of poll workers and not be detected. Impossible," he said.

Over the years, I've heard all kinds of razzmatazz about computer systems being "secure," including from my bank, Wachovia. But Wachovia recently disclosed a data breach in which financial info on 100,000 customers was swiped.

That's nothing compared to the breach at Atlanta-based CardSystems Inc., which processes Visa and Mastercard payments for the nation's banks. A hacker may have stolen information from 40 million customers.

These companies are heavy-hitters and have sterling state-of the-art "secure" computer systems, which failed. I guess I'm with the nerds on this stuff.

If big-shot corporations like Wachovia can't keep its computers secure, can the Bucks County Board of Elections?