<http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,63349,00.html> Wired News E-Voting Commission Gets Earful By Michael Grebb? Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63349,00.html 02:00 AM May. 06, 2004 PT WASHINGTON -- Passions ran high Wednesday at the first public hearing of the Election Assistance Commission, where activists and manufacturers of electronic voting machines clashed over whether new e-voting systems should include a voter-verifiable paper trail that auditors could use to recount votes if necessary. The newly formed commission, which is just beginning to oversee the certification of voting systems and the standardization of elections across the country, held its first meeting to examine the state of elections and voting systems. The commissioners were collecting testimony from special-interest groups, election officials, computer scientists and voting-machine makers. But the commission's chairman said he didn't expect the bipartisan panel would issue national standards requiring paper receipts when it makes preliminary recommendations next week, followed by more detailed guidelines next month. "We will not decide on what machines people will buy," said the chairman, Republican DeForest B. Soaries Jr., saying it wasn't the panel's role to tell states what to do. "We will say, if California wants to have a backup paper system, what national standards it should follow." At least 20 states are considering legislation to require a paper record of every vote cast after rushing to get ATM-like voting machines to replace paper ballots in the wake of Florida's fiasco with hanging chads in the 2000 presidential election. About 50 million people, or 29 percent of voters, are expected to vote electronically in November's election. Representatives from the machine makers tried to convince commissioners that paperless e-voting systems are not only safe and accurate, but more so than paper-based systems. Mark Radke, director of marketing at Diebold Election Systems, said Diebold's touch-screen voting systems experienced "zero security problems" during the November 2002 elections, pointing out that its "voice guidance" audio feature allowed blind voters "to vote in private for the very first time." (With paper-only systems, blind voters historically have needed to recite their ballot choices to a poll worker or friend, who would then mark the ballot for them.) Radke also said Diebold's machines outperformed other systems during the California recall elections in October. He claimed that under-counted votes were the lowest on Diebold touch screens, at 0.73 percent, compared with 2.86 percent for optical-scan systems, 4.6 percent for other electronic systems and 6.32 percent for paper-only systems. Alfie Charles, spokesman for Sequoia Voting Systems, said the "sensationalized concerns" of paper-trail advocates aren't grounded in reality. "The evidence is pretty clear," he said. "Electronic systems help prevent disenfranchisement." Several panelists also pointed out that the pool of people able to hack into an e-voting system is far smaller than those able to steal ballots, stuff the ballot box or punch holes in voting cards to change or nullify votes. Under that theory, electronic systems would increase security. "We would reduce the number of people capable of committing fraud," Charles said. But Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University computer scientist who helped author a report last July about security vulnerabilities in Diebold's touch-screen voting system, warned that paperless systems could allow savvy intruders to rig an election. He said corporations supporting a particular presidential candidate who is friendly to their needs would have billions at stake to make sure their candidate won. "We've got very well-funded and bad-intentioned adversaries to worry about," he said. Rubin said while paper trails are needed for the November election, "in the long, long term we should explore other cryptographic options and other electronic techniques" to someday run secure, paperless elections. At a press conference and rally outside the hearing, a crowd of supporters cheered when California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley took the podium. On Friday, Shelley banned the use of one model of Diebold's voting machines in four California counties, and decertified all touch-screen systems unless counties that own them implement 23 security requirements. At least one county is filing suit against Shelley for his actions, and others may follow. Supervisors in Riverside County voted unanimously Tuesday to sue Shelley, California's top election official, to remove the ban on their machines, saying his ruling would harm disabled and visually impaired voters who have been able to vote unassisted for the first time using touch-screen machines that guide them through the ballot with audio directions. Shelley charged that Diebold aggressively marketed its TSx system to voting officials in the four counties, even though the systems were not fully tested, qualified by federal officials or certified at the state level. Diebold finally finished federal testing of the TSx on April 21. Still, Shelley told supporters that he worries most about unsecured systems vulnerable to hackers. "We have seen that a bunch of high-school students can hack in and change thousands of votes," he said. "We cannot have that." He said he had received several reports of high-school hackers attempting to penetrate e-voting systems, but didn't give specific examples. One of his representatives also cited an incident in which touch-screen systems went down in a few jurisdictions during the October recall election. Elderly poll workers at one location didn't know what to do, so they asked some teenagers who happened to be there to reboot the machines for them -- an obvious opportunity to commit mischief under the right circumstances. Several witnesses at the hearing, including Shelley, recommended better training for poll workers, who may need basic computer skills to fix technical problems on Election Day. Brit Williams, a computer science professor and election expert at Kennesaw State University near Atlanta, advocated adopting a single national standard for voting software to ensure security and ease training for poll workers. Other commissioners seemed worried that poll workers would become too reliant on vendors to fix Election Day snafus. Some experts have said that the most likely hacking scenario for machines would be inside jobs from system programmers or the vendors themselves. But Denise Lamb, director of elections in New Mexico, told the panel that any polling place that experienced a severe software or hardware problem would most likely shut down rather than call in a vendor to fix the problem. For minor glitches, she said most vendors provide telephone support. Activists outside the hearing, however, were not reassured. "This is a high-stakes election, and we have to get it right," said Linda Schade, director of Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland, a group that advocates a voter-verified paper trail for electronic systems rather than "rickety, backward new voting machines." The group has already sued the state of Maryland in an effort to decertify the Diebold touch-screen machines that officials implemented statewide last year. Rep. Rush Holt (D-New Jersey) took the podium to drum up support for his Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR2239), which would require all voting machines to produce a paper record. "(Paperless e-voting machines) are in principle unverifiable," he said. "Your intentions cannot be recovered." As Holt wrapped up his comments, Jim Dickson, spokesman for the American Association of People With Disabilities, stepped forward and complained that Holt's bill would threaten to undo protections for disabled voters contained in the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Dickson, who is blind, said that voting with assistance can be a humiliating experience, particularly when the poll worker helping you doesn't agree with your choices. "They have said, 'You're voting for who?'" he said, mimicking the sarcastic voice of a poll worker. He charged that Holt's bill -- by not setting a deadline for new e-voting machines to accommodate disabled voters -- would put off those protections indefinitely. Holt quickly clarified that his bill wouldn't take away such protections. While the sides squared off in Washington, D.C., senators in California approved a bill to ban all e-voting in the state in November. The bipartisan bill passed the state Senate Committee on Elections and Reapportionment with a 3-1 vote and will now go to the Senate floor. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'