More on U.S. voting machine design flaws, from U.K. Independent

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 12:41:48 -0400
From: Michael Maynard <mikemaynard () mindspring com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: More on the voting machine design flaws.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=453116

Fears of more US electoral chaos after flaws are discovered
in ballot computers
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
14 October 2003


Next year's US presidential election may be compromised by
newvoting machines that computer scientists believe are
unreliable, poorly programmed and prone to tampering.

An investigation published in today's Independent reveals
tens of thousands of touch screen voting machinesmay be
less reliable than the old punchcards, which famously
stalled the presidential election in Florida in 2000,
leaving the whole election open to international ridicule.
The machines are said to offer no independent verification
of individual voting choices, making recounts impossible,
and the software is shielded from public scrutiny by trade
secrecy agreements.
The shortcomings have appeared in two academic studies and
have prompted calls for urgent oversight legislation. They
have also cast doubt on the accuracy of last November's
mid-term election results, especially in Georgia, the first
state to switch to touch screen voting.
David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford
University, said: "These machines do not allow the voters
to check that their votes are accurately and permanently
recorded. No one can prove that the machines are
trustworthy."
The three leading voting machine manufacturers are
substantial Republican campaign donors, and one of their
chief executives, Walden O'Dell of Diebold, in Ohio, wrote
a letter to Republican supporters saying he was "committed
to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the
President next year". That raised serious concerns of bias.
"The rush towards computerisation is very dubious," Rebecca
Mercuri, a research fellow at Harvard University, said. "It
takes away the checks and balances of a democratic
society."
In Georgia, citizens were alarmed at apparent anomalies in
the election results forgovernor and one of the state's two
Senate seats. Both offices were won by Republicans in
last-minute voting swings away from Democrats.
Causes for alarm included a serious malfunction in the
voting software, discovered after the machines were
packaged for shipment, which had to be repaired with a
programming "patch", and the fact that the patch showed up
on an open-access internet page. Hundreds of security flaws
were identified in subsequent follow-up studies. There were
also several election day glitches, including the loss of
67 voting memory cards in the Democrat stronghold of
central Atlanta.


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