News Copy, New York

Help America Vote Act (HAVA): Electronic Voting Worries Linger

CNET warns about electronic voting:  E-voting worries linger as Election Day nears

"All of the studied systems possess critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election," the researchers wrote. They reached that conclusion after evaluating the source code and finding ways that an attacker could insert viruses, erase logs, produce incorrect vote totals, or block some or all voters from voting.

We will head rapidly back to paper today.  A lot of paper.

PC World reported that the new voting machines will be watched closely.

State officials are defending their efforts, saying they expect elections to run smoothly:

"Ohio, with about 660,000 new voter registrations since the 2006 election, has taken several steps to ensure a smooth election, said Jeff Ortega, a spokesman for the secretary of state. In the 53 Ohio counties that use touch-screen machines, voters will have the option of voting on paper ballots, and paper ballots will be available if machines malfunction, he said."

A lot of paper.

Dan Wallach on the Discovery Channel blog believes the problem is that e-voting is not user friendly:

"For our country's shiny new electronic voting systems, news reports from early voting in the current election as well as experience in past elections all point to huge usability problems. For example, let's consider a common problem: accusations that voting machines are "flipping" people's votes (also the subject of a funny Simpsons sketch). You press the button for one candidate and it shows that you selected another candidate. We see stories like this every year these machines are used. These problems most likely have nothing to do with security attacks; a competent attacker would ensure that the machine shows the voter the proper thing while silently changing their vote on the inside. Instead, they are most likely the result of poorly designed user interfaces."

E-Week summarized the basic threats and technical problems.

Be ready for software attacks, wireless attacks, paperless trails ... and even paper trails (all requiring time consuming and expensive audits).

Newsweek had a bit more on those audits -- and other computer nightmares.

It seems we're all going to endure a "counting" problem today:

"...The most serious problems could come from the counting of ballots. All tabulation systems (including human ones) make counting errors—which is why recounts are mandated in close elections. But on Tuesday, some or all of the voters in nineteen states, including Georgia and New Jersey, will be utilizing paperless Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) machines that do not permit recounts—because there is nothing to be recounted."

An unaccountable election.

Electronic Voting's Peril: Touch Screens Can Be Manipulated

20 states have electronic voting with touch screens that be maliciously calibrated to favor specific candidates, according to a Wired magazine blog article.

 This story has been out there for a long time.

"If one candidate has a check box in one place and a different candidate has it in a different place, you can set it up so that if you press on one candidate it gets recorded for another candidate," said Matt Blaze, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who led one of three teams that co-wrote the report (.pdf) last year. "But if you press on the other candidate, it gets recorded correctly for that candidate. You can make it work perfectly normally in most of the screen, but have it behave the way you want in small parts of it."

For those not familiar with Wired, it's a magazine that focuses on new technology and its contributors tend to be computer "geeks" who know how computers can be hacked into.

In other words, if Wired says that machines are vulnerable -- America is in for a slew of electronic complications today.

At issue are touchscreen machines manufactured by ES&S, 97,000 of which will be used today in 20 states, including counties in the crucial swing states of Ohio and Colorado.

As The Brad Blog has warned for several months, these companies have not been as diligent as they need to be -- and the election officials in many instances are close to clueless.

Wired explained -- in detail (it's a great article.  Please READ it) -- the process for calibrating the touchscreens allows poll workers or someone else to manipulate specific regions of the screen, so that a touch in one region is registered in another. "

"Someone attempting to rig an election could thus arrange for votes for one candidate to be mapped to the opponent."

The Brad Blog has listed some recent problems with electronic voting and it's alerts are updated regularly.