Ohio electronic voting machines vulnerable to tampering in 2008

[LiberalHeart]

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A Treo and a magnet would be tools enough to tamper with the workings of electronic voting machines used in Ohio as well as across the country, the political swing state's top elections official said Friday.

In a $1.9 million review with national implications, both corporate and academic scientists identified a host of ways in which votes cast on touch-screen technology are vulnerable to manipulation. Such machines have been purchased across the U.S. to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act.

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Reviewers said voting was potentially vulnerable on all three companies' machines, Premier and Hart machines did not protect properly against "malicious insiders," ES&S machines did not protect against improper access to election data and Premier machines did not adequately protect voters' privacy.

She said researchers found that invasive computer messages could fairly easily be introduced by a voter to an electronic voting machine and spread rapidly in "the equivalent of sharing a toothbrush."

Much more here:
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071214/NEWS09/71214022