Reply #14: Time to Recall E-Vote Machines? | WIRED NEWS 10/06/03

[Stephanie]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60713,00.html
Time to Recall E-Vote Machines?
By Kim Zetter

08:39 AM Oct. 06, 2003 PT

As Californians head to the polls on Tuesday, voters in at least one county will cast their ballots electronically on machines that have been shown to be flawed.

Election officials around the country have been switching to new computerized polling machines with the hope of avoiding a repeat of the Florida debacle over punch-card voting that marred the 2000 presidential election.

But a training session for poll workers in Alameda County suggests problems other than hanging chads could surface this time around.

Alameda County uses 4,000 touch-screen voting machines manufactured by Diebold Election Systems. But last month, officials in Maryland released a report saying that the Diebold machines were "at high risk of compromise" due to security flaws in the software. Despite this, officials in Alameda County said their policies and procedures for using the machines will secure them against voting fraud.

However, information obtained by Wired News at a training session for Alameda County poll workers indicates that security lapses in the use of the equipment and poor worker training could expose the election to serious tampering.

Voting-machine experts say the lapses could allow a poll worker or an outsider to change votes in machines without being detected. And because other problems inherent in the software won’t be fixed before the recall, experts say sophisticated intruders can intercept and change vote tallies as officials transmit them electronically. <more>