Reply #10: ELECTION MACHINE SECURITY

[MelissaB]

ELECTION MACHINE SECURITY

Sunday, August 20, 2006
David Sarasohn
T he House Science Committee sounds like the geeky part of the House of Representatives, the kind of committee where representatives look through microscopes while all the cool congressmen are off naming bridges after themselves or going on golf vacations with lobbyists.

But a hearing last month produced a number that could make even the most sociable members put down their fundraiser cocktails and pay attention.

Acting like people who know what has to be done, but don't want to do it, the Science Committee, together with the House Administration Committee, listened to people testifying on the reliability of voting machines -- the first and only hearing on the subject by this Congress. True to the spreadsheet wonkiness of the topic, the hearing seems to have produced only a single newspaper story.

But what the congressmen heard got their attention.

"It would take somebody relatively unsophisticated to hack into a machine," reports Rep. Darlene Hooley, D-Ore., who a month later is still talking about the hearing. "But the biggest problem isn't hacking, programming errors.

"In some cases, the margin of error is 9 percent."

The roomful of politicians, most of whom at some point won or lost an election by less than 9 percent, apparently noticed.


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