A critical security vulnerability
has been brought to light in Diebold touch screen voting machines, just as
several primaries are about to occur.
In a May 12th New York Times article, Avi Rubin, a Professor
at Johns Hopkins and Verified Voting advisory board member, said “I almost had a
heart attack” when he understood the nature of the problem. Michael Shamos, a
computer scientist and voting system examiner in Pennsylvania, was quoted in the
same article, "It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting
system." Indeed, several experts have urged that the technical details of the
problem not be discussed because it is so easy to exploit. Such recommendations
are extraordinary, coming from a community that values openness and transparency
on computer security issues.
According to the report (available in
redacted version at www.blackboxvoting.org) by computer expert Harri Hursti, the
machines have insufficient protection to prevent malicious firmware from being
installed. If bad firmware were installed, it would be difficult to detect, and
it might be difficult to install new “clean” firmware. A wide variety of poll
workers, shippers, technicians and so on, have physical access to voting
machines at various times; any of these people might be able to use that access
to install bad firmware.
Shockingly, news of the security flaw was topped
off on Monday with news that both Diebold and the State of Maryland have been
aware of the security vulnerability for at least two years.
Further
adding to the scandal is the fact that the backdoor (or doors) were designed
into the machines intentionally, against accepted design practice and, indeed,
simple common sense, as Diebold spokesman David Bear admits in the same New York
Times article. He goes on to say, “For there to be a problem here, you're
basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election
officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software,” he said. “I
don't believe these evil elections people exist.”
Diebold's confidence in
election officials is heartwarming. But what really matters is the confidence of
the voting public. What are these same election officials to do when disgruntled
candidates question the results of their elections? They can’t point to federal
and state safeguards, which completely overlooked this glaring problem. In most
places using Diebold touch screen machines, there will be no voter-verified
paper records to recount. In those jurisdictions in particular, Diebold has left
election officials with no method to defend themselves or their elections when
questions arise.
It is easy for people to learn the wrong lesson from
this incident: that we need more stringent computer security. More stringent
security is desirable (depending on how much it costs), but won’t solve the real
problem. The cause of the real problem is the use of paperless electronic
voting, which is fatally flawed as a concept. Modern computer systems cannot be
made sufficiently secure to handle all-electronic voting with secret ballots.
Mistakes or tampering at any level, from the software to the circuits in the
chips can change electronic votes, undetectably.
This incident is just
one of many, involving products from many different manufacturers. It won’t be
the last. Indeed, such problems will never end as long as paperless electronic
voting is in place.
Suppose we had the best possible practices, such as
thorough background checks of the ownership, management, and employees of
vendors, meticulous and intrusive reviews of the design and manufacture of the
equipment by truly independent experts, and so on – the kinds of measures used
for regulation of gambling equipment. Even these measures would not eliminate
programming errors and security holes. Even in a best-case scenario, there will
always be people who can “hack” the machines (including the programmers who
write the code in the first place). Voters will never know whether their votes
were recorded and counted accurately.
Given the current state of
technology, elections cannot be trustworthy unless there are voter-verified
paper records of the votes and a significant portion of those paper records are
manually counted to check the machine counts. We can’t guarantee that machines
will always function correctly, but each voter can make sure that his or her
vote has been correctly recorded on paper (preferably by the voter’s own
hand).
Fortunately, twenty-seven states with over fifty percent of the
U.S. population require voter-verified paper records. Some counties in those
states may use the Diebold touch screen machines with “paper trail” printers. If
they must use the machines, we would urge them in the strongest terms to be
especially diligent in protecting and auditing those paper records – including
manually counting more than the minimum number required by law.
Every
jurisdiction with voter-verified paper records (paper ballots or paper audit
trail printouts verified by the voter) should publicly carry out a manual audit,
after the initial vote count is reported, with random selection of the areas to
be counted. Voters should encourage their election officials to carry out such
an audit – regardless of whether it is required by law in their state – in order
to check the voting system for accuracy. Currently, more than twice as many
jurisdictions offer voter-verified paper records than there are jurisdictions
that require audits.
Whatever you do, don’t let these problems discourage
you from voting. If you don’t vote, you can be sure that your vote won’t
count. Instead, contact your elected officials and the candidates and make sure
they understand that paperless electronic voting must be replaced with systems
that provide a voter-verified paper record that is manually audited – our
democracy depends upon it.
###
Verified Voting
Foundation
1550 Bryant St., Suite 855
San Francisco, CA
94103
415-487-2255 telephone
info@verifiedvoting.org
The Verified
Voting Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation; your contributions
to the Foundation are tax-deductible to the extent provided by U.S. tax law. To
donate online, visit http://verifiedvoting.org/donate
--or if you prefer to mail a check, please send to Verified Voting at the
address shown above.
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