Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Sometimes Paper is Safer
byThe North Carolina problem revolves around the certification of software and equipment for e-voting machines. The fact that North Carolina has a law requiring such certification isn’t surprising — in 2002 electronic voting machines in Wake County, N.C., lost more than 400 votes: last year, more than 4,500 votes were lost in Carteret County when machines ran out of memory and were no longer able to record ballots.
As a result of these problems, North Carolina’s “Public Confidence in Elections” law requires that all computer software running voting systems be deposited in escrow and reviewed by technical experts hired by election officials. Unfortunately, this process has been sidetracked by voting technology companies that are reluctant to provide the software, claiming that some of it is provided by third parties, which are not legally required to make the computer code available.
The issues in Florida were far more dramatic. A representative of Black Box Voting, an organization that focuses on potential electronic vote fraud, recently hacked a voting machine and was able to reverse the outcome of a test vote. Finnish computer security expert Harri Hursti demonstrated how to change votes using only a memory card and the same level of security access that is typically given to poll workers. Diebold, the company that manufactured the device, had publicly stated that security for the system could not be disabled using a memory card.
The story comes on the heels of resignation of Diebold CEO Wally O’Dell, a staunch Republican who promised to deliver Ohio for President George W. Bush during the 2004 presidential election.
The long, onerous process of tallying votes would seemingly lend itself to an electronic process. But in light of these debacles, it could reasonably be argued that efficiency isn’t a panacea. Sometimes doing things by hand may be the best option to ensure the integrity of the process.
