> [just posted to AAPORnet]
>
> <http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen>
> Robert Kennedy's Rolling Stone article on new evidence suggesting a stolen
> 2004 presidential election just put online.
[And also apropos that subject line, Newsweek seems just to have discovered that that Diebold voting machines couldn't be easier to manipulate if they had set out to design them that way:]
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12888600/site/newsweek/
Steven Levy-The Technologist
Will Your Vote Count in 2006?
'When you're using a paperless voting system, there is no
security,' says Stanford's David Dill.
Steven Levy
Newsweek
May 29, 2006 issue - Just when you thought it was safe to go back
into the voting booth, here comes more disturbing news about the
trustworthiness of electronic touchscreen ballot machines. Earlier
this month a report by Finnish security expert Harri Hursti
analyzed Diebold voting machines for an organization called Black
Box Voting. Hursti found unheralded vulnerabilities in the machines
that are currently entrusted to faithfully record the votes of
millions of Americans.
How bad are the problems? Experts are calling them the most serious
voting-machine flaws ever documented. Basically the trouble stems
from the ease with which the machine's software can be altered. It
requires only a few minutes of pre-election access to a Diebold
machine to open the machine and insert a PC card that, if it
contained malicious code, could reprogram the machine to give
control to the violator. The machine could go dead on Election Day
or throw votes to the wrong candidate. Worse, it's even possible
for such ballot-tampering software to trick authorized technicians
into thinking that everything is working fine, an illusion you
couldn't pull off with pre-electronic systems. "If Diebold had set
out to build a system as insecure as they possibly could, this
would be it," says Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University
computer-science professor and elections-security expert.
Diebold Election Systems spokesperson David Bear says Hursti's
findings do not represent a fatal vulnerability in Diebold
technology, but simply note the presence of a feature that allows
access to authorized technicians to periodically update the
software. If it so happens that someone not supposed to use the
machine-or an election official who wants to put his or her thumb
on the scale of democracy-takes advantage of this fast track to
fraud, that's not Diebold's problem. "[Our critics are] throwing
out a 'what if' that's premised on a basis of an evil, nefarious
person breaking the law," says Bear.
Those familiar with the actual election process-by and large run by
honest people but historically subject to partisan politicking,
dirty tricks and sloppy practices-are less sanguine. "It gives me a
bit of alarm that the voting systems are subject to tampering and
errors," says Democratic Rep. William Lacy Clay, who worries that
machines in his own St. Louis district might be affected by this
vulnerability. (In Maryland and Georgia, all the machines are
Diebold's.)
The Diebold security gap is only the most vivid example of the
reality that no electronic voting system can be 100 percent safe or
reliable. That's the reason behind an initiative to augment these
systems, adding a paper receipt that voters can check to make sure
it conforms with their choices. The receipt is retained at the
polling place so a physical count can be conducted. "When you're
using a paperless voting system, there is no security," says David
Dill, a Stanford professor who founded the election-reform
organization Verified Voting.
To their credit, 26 states have taken action to implement paper
trails. But the U.S. Congress has yet to pass legislation
introduced last year by Rep. Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey,
that would extend this protection nationwide. Holt says his bill is
slowly gaining support. "The voters are saying that every vote
should count, and the only way to do this is by verified audit
trails," he says. But even an optimistic scenario for passage would
challenge his goal of mandatory paper receipts for November's
elections. In other words, it's unlikely that every voter using an
electronic voting device in 2006 will know for sure that his or her
vote will be reflected in the actual totals. Six years after the
2000 electoral debacle, how can this be?
© 2006 Newsweek, Inc. | Subscribe to Newsweek