Corrupted Polling, Inside Risks, Comm. ACM

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Rebecca Mercuri, Corrupted Polling, Inside Risks, Comm. ACM,
vol 36, no 11, November 1993, p. 122.


Traditionally, the November off-year elections draw little attention,
as only a handful of federal positions are filled. Voter turnouts of 30\%
or less are common in many municipalities. But these elections are far from
insignificant, because local posts won in odd-numbered years frequently
provide office-holders with the power to make procurements and appointments.
Through the grass-roots election process, Boards of Elections are staffed at
city, county and state levels, and these Board members are currently the key
decision-makers in the ongoing conversion from lever and manual voting systems
to electronic ballot tabulation in the U.S.A.


As vast metropolises adopt computer ballot-counting methods (including
punch-card, mark-sense and direct-entry systems), the question arises whether a
national or local election can be "thrown" via internal or external
manipulation of hardware, software and/or data. Proponents of electronic voting
systems say sufficient controls are being exercised, such that attempts to
subvert an election would be detectable. But speakers at a recent session on
security and auditability of electronic vote-tabulation systems [1] pointed out
that the Federal Election Commission has provided only voluntary voting system
standards that may not be adequate to ensure election integrity.  Numerous
incidents of electronic voting difficulties have come to the attention of the
press, although to date there have been no convictions for vote-fraud by
computer.


One of the more interesting recent cases occurred during the March 23, 1993,
city election in St. Petersburg, Florida.  Two systems for ballot tabulation
were being used on a trial basis.  For an industrial precinct in which there
were no registered voters, the vote summary showed 1,429 votes for the
incumbent mayor (who incidentally won the election by 1,425 votes).  Officials
explained under oath that this precinct was used to merge regions counted by
the two computer systems, but were unable to identify precisely how the 1,429
vote total was produced. Investigation by the Pinellas Circuit Court revealed
sufficient procedural anomalies to authorize a costly manual recount, which
certified the results. The Florida Business Council continues to look into this
matter.


Equipment-related problems are a source of concern to Election Boards,
especially when time-critical operations must be performed. The Columbus
Dispatch reported (June 12, 1992) that 40 of the 758 electronic machines
used in Franklin County's June primary required service on election day.
Noted is the fact that only 13 of the County's 1500 older mechanical lever
machines needed repair during the election. Of the defective electronic
machines, 7 of the voter ballot cartridges were not able to be loaded into the
tallying computers so those precincts' results had to be hand-keypunched; power
boards in 10 of the machines had blown fuses; 18 had malfunctions with the
paper tape on which the results were printed. Difficulties with the central
software for merging the electronic and mechanical tallies created further
delays in reporting results. Officials decided to withhold the final payment
of \$1.7M of their \$3.82M contract until greater reliability is assured.


If Franklin County did not have enough trouble already, two electronic ballot
tabulation vendors are presently contesting the contract award.  MicroVote
Corporation is suing the R.F. Shoup Corp., Franklin County, and others in U.S.
District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Columbus Division, for over
\$10M in damages, claiming conspiracy and fraud in the bidding process. This
matter is, as yet, unresolved.


In another region of Ohio, in the same primary, the Cleveland Plain Dealer
(June 11, 1992) reported that Kenneth J. Fisher, member of the Cuyahoga County
Board of Elections, allowed an employee to feed a computer a precinct
identification card that was not accompanied by that precinct's ballots, during
the vote tabulation process. Apparently, the ballots cast in the Glenville
region had been inadvertently misplaced, and at 1 A.M. the board members ``were
tired and wanted to go home'' so the election official authorized the bogus
procedure, despite the fact that doing so might have constituted a violation of
state law. Subsequent inquiry did not lead to any indictments.


Technology alone does not eliminate the possibility of corruption and
incompetence in elections; it merely changes the platform on which they may
occur. The voters and the Election Boards who serve them must be made aware
of the risks of adopting electronic vote-tallying systems, insisting that
the checks and balances inherent to our democracy be maintained.


\small{{\bf [1]} Papers by Saltman, Mercuri, Neumann and Greenhalgh, {\it
Proc.~16th National Computer Security Conf.,} NIST/NCSC, Baltimore MD,
Sep.~20-23, 1993.  {\it Inside Risks} columns by Neumann (Nov.~1990)
and Mercuri (Nov.~1992) give further background.


{\bf Rebecca Mercuri} is a research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania,
where she is completing her dissertation on Computational Acoustics in the
Computer and Information Science Department. She frequently testifies as an
expert witness on computer security and voting systems. Email
mercuri () gradient cis upenn edu. }