Thursday, December 18, 2003

Expert doubts reliability of e-voting

State expected to go electronic by '06

By Nik Bonopartis
Poughkeepsie Journal

In the mid-19th century, hardly an election was held in New York City without the result swayed to the specifications of one man William Marcy ''Boss'' Tweed.

Tweed was the most well-known figure in a political machine so corrupt, historians estimate it swindled the city out of as much as $200 million. Tweed used a small army of henchmen to fan out to the city's voting districts to fraudulently inflate vote totals.

With the advent of electronic voting machines, a modern-day Boss Tweed could pull off that feat almost single-handedly, said a software engineer who spoke recently to Ulster County voters at Kingston city hall.

The electronic machines, known as DREs for direct recording electronic have several advantages over the lever and punch-card variety. They make it easy for election officials to offer multi-lingual ballots, without a limit on the number of languages the ballot can be displayed in. They're more accessible to the handicapped with add-on peripheral devices, while touch screens provide a direct, simple way to cast a vote.

And instead of waiting hours or in the case of the 2000 presidential election, weeks to arrive at a final tally of votes, results can be tabulated instantly once polls close.

Hacking elections

But the majority of the electronic voting machines in use and in development only give on-screen confirmation of vote counts, which has experts and voters worried malicious or altered software code could secretly tilt elections in favor of certain candidates.

''We worry about what's going on in the software between the time that you vote and the time it's tabulated,'' said Bo Lipari, a member of the Finger Lakes 2004 Election Committee and a software engineer with more than 20 years of experience. ''If we have no paper record, we're relying on the DRE software to be perfect.

''As a software engineer, I can tell you that no software is perfect.''

New York is looking to implement electronic voting by the 2006 federal election, the new deadline for compliance with the Help America Vote Act or HAVA of 2002. The law requires states to replace punch-card and lever ballots and make other changes designed to make voting more accessible. The original compliance date was Jan. 1 but New York is not close to meeting the requirements by then.

''We're making every effort to meet that requirement, although full funding hasn't arrived yet from the federal government,'' said Lee Daghlian, spokesman for the state board of elections.

Only a portion of the $66 million from the federal government has arrived.

While the governor and the state Senate included the money in their budget bills, the state Assembly has refused to go along, Daghlian said.

On Thursday, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., announced legislation that would require all electronic ballots to produce paper receipts so there is a physical trail that can be audited following an election. Clinton said like ATM transactions, voting machines should produce a receipt, and said she hoped the legislation would give voters confidence in the machines before they're introduced in 2006.

Despite extensive beta testing and code that spends months or years in development and tweaking, even commercial software made by the most well-known and experienced companies inevitably has bugs or security flaws, Lipari said.

Dangerous mistakes

Those flaws could be the entry point for hackers and others who have a vested interest in changing or guaranteeing the outcome of an election.

Critics of paperless electronic voting machines have asked that the software that makes the machines run be made ''open source.'' In other words, the software's code would be free for inspection by independent experts who would verify it is free of any code that could sway elections.

But the manufacturers of such machines have refused, insisting that making the software open source could have the opposite effect, giving hackers insight into how the machines work and thus exposing the machines to a greater risk of tampering.

At least two states already using the machines California and Maryland have raised concerns about their security. In a September report, Maryland officials said voting machines made by Diebold are ''at high risk of compromise,'' but hope to have the problems ironed out and will use the machines in 2004 elections. In California, machines were audited after a last-minute software patch was applied before the recent recall election.

Werner Buchholz, a voter who lives in the Town of Poughkeepsie, said he'll support electronic voting machines in New York only if they reproduce secure paper ballots for auditing later.

''The only way you can know (votes are being properly counted) is to have an audit, not just assurance from the manufacturers that they've tested it,'' Buchholz said. ''You can't really trust them any more than anyone else in this society.

''The whole process ought to be transparent and available to the public.''

Given the uncertainties surrounding electronic voting systems, Dutchess County legislator-elect Joel Tyner said he thinks New York is better off staying with traditional lever machines.

''We need voter-verified paper trails,'' he said.

Skeptics point to two recent developments. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., was elected in 1996 by people who cast their votes on machines manufactured by American Information Systems, a year after Hagel left his post as CEO of that company. In August, Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc., a DRE manufacturer, told Ohio Republicans in a fund-raising letter that he is ''committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''

By staying with lever ballots, ''we don't have to worry about the wealthy Republicans who are owning and running these electronic voting machines,'' Tyner said.

Party shouldn't matter

Lipari, the software engineer from the Finger Lakes region, said he does not like to paint the issue as a partisan one. He said hackers and disgruntled insiders working for DRE manufacturers can be of any political persuasion, and voters on either side of the political spectrum should be concerned.

State Sen. Stephen Saland, R-Poughkeepsie, said vulnerable machines could ''create enormous injustices in our entire democratic system,'' but said he's willing to wait and see if security issues can be hashed out first.

New York's election law which requires the names of all candidates in a district be visible on the front of a ballot will need to be recertified, or the state will have to hire a manufacturer willing to produce a full-faced ballot that would fit on one video screen. In some states, voters can page through different screens to see the names of all the candidates.

Daghlian said the state board of elections has done all of the preliminary work necessary to comply with the voting act and is waiting on the funding.

Though well aware of the potential problems with electronic voting machines, New York ''will go with whatever the federal standards are,'' he said. Tampering with the machines, he said, would ''take a conspiracy.''

''You'll never be able to get any machine for voting that's 100 percent tamper proof,'' he said.

Saland said he's hoping a solution to security fears can be worked out before New York holds its first election using the new machines.

''Hopefully there can be a system that accomplishes what is being asked of us,'' he said. ''And if, in fact, that turns out to be beyond the reach of our current technology, perhaps we ought to be going back to the drawing board.''