Kimble: 'Mother of security holes' in state voting system

MARK KIMBLE
Tucson Citizen

Electronic scanners that Pima County uses to count votes have "the mother of security holes" that can be exploited by someone with "mediocre technical ability."

That's the opinion of a computer expert who found it incredibly easy to hack into the type of equipment used in Pima County, 11 other Arizona counties and other states.

And an Arizona organization working to ensure that elections are fair and results verifiable also is criticizing the ballot-counting machines. They are "vulnerable to tampering," said a Tucsonan with a doctorate in electrical engineering.

The bottom line is simple - and alarming: Vote totals reported by the machines may not be accurate. It wouldn't be difficult for someone to manipulate the equipment so that votes are added or taken away from a candidate.

It may be impossible to detect the tampering.

The Arizona Secretary of State's Office said it is aware of the concerns and is looking into them. But except for broad platitudes ("The security of our voting machines is a high priority of this office"), nothing has been done.

The problems involve optical scanners at each polling place. Voters pick up ballots and use black felt pens to color in ovals next to the names of candidates they support. The ballots then are fed into scanners that count the votes.

After the polls are closed, a telephone line is plugged into the scanner and the totals are transmitted to a central computer. The scanner also prints out a paper tape with the vote totals. A day or two later, the scanners are taken to a central place where a memory card is removed from each machine and the votes counted again.

It sounds foolproof, with double and triple checks. It's not. Someone with rudimentary computer knowledge could place votes for a candidate on the memory card of a machine before the polls even open.

The problem was discovered by Harri Hursti, a computer programmer and security engineer. He studied the scanners, manufactured by Diebold Election Systems, for BlackBoxVoting.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that describes itself as "the official consumer protection group for elections."

His report, issued last month, was scathing. Hacking into the machines "is an exceptionally flexible, one-man exploit requiring only a few hundred dollars, mediocre technical ability and modest persuasive skills (or, in lieu of persuasive skills, inside access)," Hursti wrote.

Hursti compared the scanners to "a house with an unlockable revolving door." The system has "the mother of security holes and no apparent cure will produce ... system safety," he said.

Diebold said the machines are secure and any tampering would be detected. Hursti disagrees.

Thomas W. Ryan, a Tucsonan with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, is one of the organizers of Arizona Citizens for Fair Elections. The nonpartisan group wants the state to look into the shortcomings of the Diebold scanners.

In a July 20 letter to Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer, Ryan wrote that "tampering is possible." And he told Brewer, "you cannot be certain that the election results, as reported in the final canvass, are an accurate reflection of voter intent."

The most serious problem, Ryan said, is the removable memory card on which votes are stored. The card also contains "executable code" that could be modified to add or subtract votes from candidates, Ryan said. "It would be tricky, but not impossible," he said.

Have elections been tampered with? Ryan said it's impossible to know. A strange situation last fall hasn't been explained.

In a Phoenix-area legislative district race for two state House seats, a winning candidate and a losing candidate were separated by only a handful of votes. A recount was ordered, and when the same ballots were fed back into a Diebold scanner, the loser came out ahead - with an additional 500 votes counted.

It is not clear why more votes were recorded in the second count, Ryan said. The Secretary of State's Office attributed it to problems with people using "nonstandard" pens on mailed-in votes, and the matter was ped. But was it tampering? And even if it wasn't, is that kind of variance in the number of ballots counted acceptable?

Kevin Tyne, deputy secretary of state, said he and Brewer are aware of the potential problems. "The security of our voting machines is a high priority of this office," he said. "We are definitely on top of it."

Nothing will be done until the problem is examined more, Tyne said.

So next time you feed your ballot with those colored-in ovals into a computer reader, wonder if your vote is really being counted accurately.

"There are a lot of people out there who have the technical skills to do this type of thing," Ryan said. "And now that we know this is a problem, it increases the likelihood it will happen."