With just nine months to go until Election Day, electronic voting machines remain as iffy and controversial as ever. The new technology was once widely viewed as an improvement over the antiquated paper ballots used in some states during the highly contentious 2000 presidential race that ushered George W. Bush into the White House (think: hanging chads). But it is still plagued by accuracy and security concerns.

In a recent report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)—Congress's investigative arm—gave at best a lukewarm endorsement of electronic voting technology. Congress called upon the GAO to investigate the role that iVotronic direct-recording electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting machines, made by Election Systems & Software, Inc., in Omaha, Neb., played in the highly controversial 2006 election for Florida's 13th Congressional District, in which Republican Vern Buchanan edged out Democrat Christine Jennings by a whisker-thin 369 vote margin.

During that election, more than 18,000 of the 143,532 ballots cast on the e-voting machines in Florida's Sarasota County did not register a vote for either candidate. The GAO checked for flaws in voting machines used there during the election. As part of the effort, investigators examined the firmware (software embedded in the devices) to make sure it matched that certified by the State of Florida. They also tested the devices to make sure they properly recorded and counted the ballots and whether they could provide accurate results even if miscalibrated.

The agency's conclusion: "Although the test results cannot be used to provide absolute assurance, we believe that these test results, combined with the other reviews that have been conducted by Florida, GAO, and others, have significantly reduced the possibility that the iVotronic DREs were the cause of the undervote."

Although hardly a ringing endorsement for e-voting technology, the GAO's findings contradicted those of researchers at Dartmouth College and the University of California, Los Angeles, who, after conducting a separate study (released in September) found that the "exceptionally high ... undervote rate" in the Florida's 13th District race "was almost certainly caused by" a poorly designed and confusing electronic ballot displayed on the voting machine's touch screen.

Florida's own assessment of its e-voting technology statewide has been even less enthusiastic. The state last May commissioned a review led by Florida State University's Security and Assurance in Information Technology (SAIT) laboratory of voting system software made by Diebold Election Systems (which now calls itself Premier Election Solutions). Two months later, investigators released a scathing report in which they describe a glitch in Diebold's optical-scan firmware that enabled a "type of vote manipulation if an adversary can introduce an unofficial memory card into an active terminal" prior to an election. Such a card can be preprogrammed to essentially swap the electronically tabulated votes of two candidates or reroute all of one candidate's votes to a different candidate. The investigators simulated a cyber strike on their test systems and had no trouble carrying it out despite new mechanisms designed to protect against "similarly documented attacks in previous studies," the report states.

SAIT also found that the systems' encryption algorithms "had some cryptographic flaws," says SAIT co-director Alec Yasinsac, a Florida State University associate professor of computer science. In particular, the keys required to lock and unlock encrypted information were difficult to manage and safeguard against potential hackers. Once they cracked the encryption code, investigators found, intruders were able to access all encrypted data in the voting machine. "The types of attacks are very real," he says.

2 Comments

1. 1. ddearborn 02:06 AM 2/13/08

   As mentioned, the problem with the Florida election, "was done on handwritten ballots and punch ballots"
   
   The problem is not the ballot, but the humans marking the ballots. Humans are notoriously error prone...
   
   The solution is not leaping to ballot-less Internet voting but to improve the ballot itself.
   
   The answer is a high tech physical ballot hardened against fraud and accident which is marked by machines similar to modern ink-jet printers.
   
   This gives advantages of touch-screen voting without the nightmare of hackers rigging elections.
   
   And ballot recounts can be done dozens of times because the ballots are real objects kept secure.

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2. 2. neel 09:35 AM 3/18/10

   'EVMs illegally being used for a decade'
   
   Author - Ajay Jagga, High Court Lawyer, India
   
   Sanjay Sharma, TNN, Feb 22, 2010, 03.44am IST
   CHANDIGARH: The electronic voting machines (EVMs) are being used in violation of the Information Technology Act 2000, a research paper has revealed.
   
   Author of the research paper, advocate Ajay Jagga, told The Times of India, on Sunday that as per IT Act, 2000, a verifiable audit trail has to be provided in case of any electronic record, which is now admissible as evidence as per Evidence Act but in case of electronic voting, the voter does not get any receipt with regard to his voting.
   
   The research paper recently attracted the attention of experts when a conference on "EVMs: How trustworthy? " in Chennai passed a unanimous resolution on February 13, to approach the Election Commission of India (ECI) for bringing the electronic voting procedure in tune with IT Act, 2000.
   
   Jagga said he would soon approach ECI seeking formation of legal committee to remove the illegality or will knock the doors of court.He said the voter comes across a beep and flash, but what has happened inside the machine and whether the data has been recorded as per the wish of the elector, is not know. It is just like deposited money in the bank and official of the bank says no receipt is required.
   
   The lawyer said, "Unless the voter gets a receipt like the one we get in ATM or after the use of debit or credit cards, all electronic transactions including a vote, are illegal." What is the evidence that the vote cast has really been recorded and that it has been recorded in the manner the voter intended, he asked.
   
   For the purpose and to protect the secrecy of ballot, all such receipts, after the voter has checked his transaction, should be put in a box which should remain with ECI to be produced as evidence in case of a dispute, he said. The government amended the relevant laws in 1989 to equate EVM with ballot and ballot box to facilitate transition from ballot paper to EVM but the IT Act 2000 created a new complication that has to be immediately resolved in the interest of fairness of things, Jagga pointed out.
   
   

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