An independent review of Maryland's proposed touch-screen voting
system released Wednesday found a "high risk of compromise" by
malicious outsiders who might want to tamper with election results.
But state officials believe the flaws can be fixed
quickly, and are continuing with plans to distribute the machines
statewide for the presidential primary election next March.
Officials unveiled selected portions of an evaluation by
California-based Science Applications International Corp. of a
new $55.6 million voting system the state will install in the coming months, and said they had begun work on the hundreds of steps
identified to ensure the security of voting procedures.
"We believe we are fully prepared to roll out the revised
Diebold machines," said Gilles W. Burger, chairman of the
Maryland State Board of Elections.
The outside
evaluation was ordered by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., shortly after
a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins University concluded that
the software behind Diebold Election Systems' AccuVote-TS voting
machines was vulnerable to tampering that could skew election results.
The review released Wednesday paints a less-than-flattering picture of how an election would have been run in Maryland had the
Hopkins study not drawn attention to problems. Several risks were
deemed serious.
While some changes were required
of Diebold, many more are to be made by the State Board of Elections.
The study found problems not only with the technology behind the
electronic machines, but in policies and procedures used by state and
local election boards.
"The system, as implemented
in policy, procedure and technology, is at high risk of compromise," the report said. "Any computerized voting system imple
mented using the present set of policies and procedures would require
these same mitigations."
State officials believe the
analysis performed on Maryland's system is the most thorough
ever conducted, and it was eagerly anticipated by county and state
elections supervisors across the country who have fretted about
switching to the electronic voting machines in the aftermath of the
widely publicized Hopkins report.
One of the
Hopkins researchers, Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of the
university's Information Security Institute, expressed
astonishment that Maryland would proceed with the purchase of the
machines after so many problems were uncovered.
"If you commission SAIC to do a study and write a report,
and they come back and say that the system is insecure, it would
seem to make sense to suspend the plans to use the system until SAIC
writes a report saying that it is safe to use them," Rubin said. "It
defies logic that Maryland has these plans [to proceed] given what
SAIC says about the Diebold machines."
But
state budget secretary James C. "Chip" DiPaula Jr., who oversaw the
review, said the state has little flexibility. Federal and state law
requires an upgrade of voting equipment, he said, and federal funds
from the Help America Vote Act are being used for the purchase.
The touch-screen system was used last year in
Montgomery, Prince George's, Allegany and Dorchester counties, and
will now be rolled out in 19 other counties. Baltimore City uses a
different electronic system.
Diebold officials said
Wednesday that the results confirmed that the electronic systems
were safe to use.
"After the completion of the
SAIC analysis, it's obvious that the security of our system is very,
very sound, and voters should feel comfortable using our terminals,"
said Mark Radke, voting industry director for Diebold Election
Systems. "The current version of the product is very solid and accurate."
Diebold has already made changes to
address concerns, state elections officials said Wednesday,
including altering the way pass codes are used to access voting
machines and encrypting the results sent electronically from
polling places to local election board headquarters. The company
will absorb the cost of those changes.
The state
elections board has also made changes: It has removed the elections
management computer server from the agency's network connections.
That's because the elections board internal network also provided
Internet access, creating a previously unnoticed potential entry point
for hackers.
The state board also plans to hire
three new staff members, including security and training officials, as
recommended by the review. The salaries for personnel will be
covered through federal funds, said Jim Pettit, a spokesman for the
state elections board.
The evaluation found that
the Hopkins study correctly identified security flaws in the computer programming code used by Diebold, but did not account for
other election system checks and balances, such as the function of
election judges. Also, the touch-screen machines will not be networked
together, eliminating another potential for fraud.
"The state of
Maryland's procedural controls and general voting environment reduce
or eliminate many of the vulnerabilities identified in the Rubin report," the SAIC study said.
While the SAIC report
was released Wednesday, the study was completed about three weeks
ago, and state officials have been meeting with Diebold rep
resentatives and others to discuss the results. Only about 60 pages
of 200 were made public.
"Let's talk about security,"
DiPaula said. "The best security is not to give a road map to people who would do us harm."
But Rubin, the Hopkins
professor, questioned the need for secrecy. "If they are planning on
fixing the security problems, then there is no need to redact
them," he said.