IP: Florida Primary 2002: Back to the Future

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Peter G. Neumann" <neumann () csl sri com>
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 22:21:58 -0700 (PDT)
To: dave () farber net
Subject: FOR IP

Dave, The situation in Florida is absolutely beyond belief.
This note from Rebecca is just the tip of the iceberg.  But
the real problems are not hitting the media.  More coming.
But please run this when you can.  PGN

RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Weds 11 September 2002  Volume 22 : Issue 24

   FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS
(comp.risks)
   ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator

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Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 03:14:39 -0400
From: "Rebecca Mercuri" <notable () mindspring com>
Subject: Florida Primary 2002: Back to the Future

Well, Florida's done it again.

Tuesday's Florida primary election marked its first large-scale roll-out of
tens of thousands of brand-new voting machines that were promised to resolve
the problems of the 2000 Presidential election.  Instead, from the very
moment the polls were supposed to open, problems emerged throughout the
state, especially in counties that had spent millions of dollars to purchase
touchscreen electronic balloting devices.

Florida voters, including Gubernatorial candidate Janet Reno, experienced
delays (ranging from minutes to hours) due to touchscreen machines not
working properly or at all.  Reno, and others (including Duval County
officials) reportedly sought court orders requesting additional time for the
day's voting session. Governor Jeb Bush granted a two hour extension, but
some of the polling places did not receive notice and shut down their
machines at 7PM, only to discover that restart was impossible because of the
way the machines had been designed.

In addition to polls and machines that opened late, many precincts reported
problems with some electronic cards voters used to activate their ballots.
A few machines in Miami-Dade County reset themselves while voters were
trying to vote.  Even the mark-sense ballots proved troublesome -- in Orange
County many votes will have to be hand-counted because defects made them
unreadable by the optical scanners.

Lest readers think that Florida is alone with these election problems, other
states, including Georgia and Maryland, have also reported similar
difficulties with touchscreens.  Problems in MD led 4 counties there to
commission a report from UMD, which revealed serious reliability concerns,
due to "catastrophic failure," "malfunction," and "unusability" of one of
the two machines they were given for testing.  The Association of Computing
Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (ACM
SIGCHI) offered to perform similar evaluations on Palm Beach's new voting
equipment, urged by U.S. Representative Robert Wexler, but the offer was
declined by the County's Board of Elections.

Florida was forewarned about problems with some of their new machines when,
in local municipal elections held back in March 2002, anomalies surfaced in
Palm Beach County.  Some voters submitted sworn affidavits to the state's
15th Circuit Court, attesting to problems ranging from a lack of privacy at
the voting booth, to machines "freezing up" until rebooted or reset, and
voter cards being rejected.

During this past summer, as part of an investigation into Emil Danciu's
contest (one of two lawsuits for the March Palm Beach County election), the
court permitted me to perform a "walk through inspection" of the County's
Board of Election warehouse where the machines were being stored and
prepared for this Fall's primary.  To my amazement, I learned that the
devices would not be tested to see whether they would register a vote for
each candidate that appeared on the ballot face.  Rather, the tallying
system was checked by transferring data between cartridges, (circumventing
the ballot face on each machine) and only one vote, for the first candidate
in each race, was cast using the touchscreen. This essentially meant that
most of the new machines would get their first real use only at the actual
election. (Not only does this testing lack rigour, but it only marginally
complies with Florida election law.)

The Palm Beach County machines were running new software too, since the
firmware on each of their 3400 machines was reprogrammed just weeks before
the Fall primary. (Such firmware reprogrammability represents a major
security and auditability risk.) A thorough inspection of the machines,
requested by Danciu's legal team, was denied by the court, on the grounds
that the purchase contract with Election Supervisor Teresa LaPore made it a
felony violation (for her) of the vendor's trade secret clause if any
devices were provided (Danciu had even offered to pay for one) for an
internal examination.  This trade secrecy also apparently prevents
disclosure of the program code files and testing reports maintained by the
state of Florida as part of their certification process.

But there's more.  Further problems may begin to surface after the
tabulation results are analyzed.  Although if any candidate wishes to seek a
recount, the only one they will get from the touchscreen machines is a
printout of the same electronic data residing inside of the machines -- not
an independent tally from human-readable ballots that were examined by the
voters who cast them on election day. Even Brazil, where 400,000
fully-electronic voting machines were first deployed nation-wide in their
2000 election, deemed it appropriate to retrofit their machines to produce
recountable voter-verifiable paper ballots, and they will begin to institute
this by modifying some 3% of their machines for their next election.

Sadly, many US communities seem to feel that it is necessary to rush ahead
with voting equipment procurements, while reliable systems, appropriate
testing, usability, security, and auditability procedures, and other
safeguards, are years away.  Florida 2000 woke us up to what many already
knew -- our voting systems and laws were flawed.  Florida 2002 lets us know
that expensive computers can not and will not provide the answer to our
election troubles.

For the short run, communities that have purchased malfunctioning equipment
should return it to the manufacturers and request refunds.  There should be
an immediate moratorium throughout the United States (and world) on the
procurement of electronic voting systems that do not provide
voter-verifiable paper ballots.  In other words, if your community is
thinking of buying touchscreen or other fully-computerized voting equipment,
don't let them do it!  Candidates and voters who believe they may have
evidence of ballots being lost or foul-play with voting systems, should
contact me, as soon as possible, at mercuri () acm org in order to learn how
data could be secured before it may be deleted. Those seeking additional
information on voting systems can refer to the numerous articles linked on
Peter Neumann's website and on mine (at www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html).
Please let your voice and concerns be heard.  Democracy is at stake.

Rebecca Mercuri, Ph.D., Bryn Mawr College

*This article is copyrighted property of Rebecca Mercuri (c) 2002.
All rights reserved.  Reprint permission is granted only in its entirety,
with this notice intact.  This article can be distributed but not sold.
For any other uses, please contact the author for permission.*

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