Voting Matters--Securing our elections Feb 07

Last month I discussed some of the key points of the Brennan Center Task Force on Voting System Security’s study on voting system vulnerabilities. This study is available at http://www.brennancenter.org This month we’ll look a bit more at which threats the Brennan Center felt were most important and how we can ensure free and fair elections on electronic voting systems.

Remember the common vulnerabilities among all electronic voting machines? If the goal is to change a close election it is easiest to install attack software or corrupt programs. Furthermore, if a voting machine has a wireless access it is far more vulnerable to attack.

For voting machines without voter verified paper trails, there is no way to independently audit the results. If the voting machine does have a paper trail, or is an optical scan machine, it is useless without an audit process.

The threat is real: installing software or corrupting programs requires very few participants and can easily swing a close election. It requires installing software, perhaps during the setup or calibration of a machine, in order to selectively miscount the results. It could even be loaded or triggered by the wireless component of a machine. For your average election judge it would be an invisible attack.

Voter verified paper trails are another problem. Several studies have shown that few voters will verify their own ballots. Unfortunately, without a mandatory audit program it is unlikely that fraud or error will be caught by the voter. Of course a smart programmer can also modify the paper and electronic tallies at the same time. If the voter even notices, they may just assume that they made the mistake.

Precinct count optical scan machines show the highest accuracy and reliability, but central count optical scanners are subject to fraud and error at the central counting station. The former have under and over vote protection; the latter do not.

The best protections are a combination of testing and audit strategies. On Election Day, testing randomly selected voting machines should be routine. In addition, audit the paper trail and match it to the electronic tally. With multi-day early voting in Texas, this would have to be a daily procedure. Both the audit and testing process should be performed by independent auditors with observers present. The audit and testing should be video recorded and retained.

Some facts to think over prior to lobby day in Austin: only 2 states ban wireless access to voting machines. 26 states require voter verified paper trails, but only 12 of them require audits. Texas doesn’t require any of them. All of Dallas County’s early voting and ADA voting machines have wireless access; none have voter verified paper trails.

Next month I will review the National Institute of Standards and Technology white paper on voting machine vulnerability and recommendations about accrediting voting machines. http://vote.nist.gov/