In another blow against democracy in America, a Florida appeals court recently ruled for electronic voting machine supplier Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and denied access to the company's source code for its iVotronic DRE voting machine suspected of undercounting about 18,000 votes in Sarasota County, Florida. The court said it was protecting the corporation's "trade secrets" in contrast to protecting the people's right to free and fair elections. The Government Accountability Office is reviewing the disputed election result and is expected to issue a report in September. The House Committee on Administration has approved a bill requiring source code disclosure on a party line vote, but an amendment was accepted limiting public disclosure of source code to government officials, parties in election related litigation, or to a data processing expert engaged in a professional inquiry concerning the accuracy of the technology. A person requesting the code must also sign a non-disclosure agreement. The amendment does not increase election transparency, but makes it more difficult for interested citizens to obtain code for study and challenge its validity. Nevertheless, the bill is an improvement over the status quo since it also requires random recounts, a voter verified paper ballot is made the official record of their vote, and prohibits machines with wireless connections.Touch screen balloting was seen as the wave of the future before the problems of the 2006 elections. Now, they are seen as "buggy" and unsafe by the public with good reason. Even the Florida legislature has decided to scrap DREs in favor of optically scaned paper balloting.
A growing amount of documentary evidence indicates that touch screen voting machines are causing unusually high numbers of undercounts such as the one which occurred in Florida's 13 Congressional District. The State of New Mexico studied data from 2004 and 2006 elections and found a dramatic difference in undervotes in minority districts depending on whether paper ballots or DRE machines were used. An undervote is a ballot on which no vote was cast for a specific race. Usually, races for a major office or particularly close contests are studied. The undervote rate was higher by more than 0.5% in major contests which suggests, according to the study, no vote occurred because of error. When the state switched to paper ballots in the 2006 cycle, the undervote rate for Governor dropped dramatically. In Native American precincts it dropped 85% and in Hispanic precincts the rate fell 69%. In white districts the error rate remained essentially the same, 2.22 for machines versus 1.75 for paper
Maryland experienced a host of problems with Diebold machines during the primaries in 2006. In response the company claimed to "fix" the problems by attaching a mouse so that the "touch" screens no longer needed to be touched. The governor encouraged voters to avoid using the machines by voting on absentee paper ballots. Princeton computer scientists studied the vulnerabilities of Diebold's AccuVote-TS machines. The team demonstrated that rogue software on a removable memory card could steal votes and modify all records, audit logs and counters kept by the machine, making even careful forensic examination fruitless. The virus could be inserted in a matter of minutes by a person with access to the machine during the boot up process and even be passed on to other machines by unwitting technicians updating them. Their paper cites lack of inventory control and secure access to electronic tabulators as additional problems. They advocate parallel testing, system certification and paper trails as potential solutions.
In 2006 I saw the back of an ES&S tabulator unlocked and open during testing of the Multnomah County, Oregon optical scan system. My computer expert and I were able to walk up to the tabulator, completely open its unlocked door and look inside at the circuitry. We even had time to photograph the interior with her digital camera. As representatives of a party sponsored citizen's group, we asked officials for documentation showing that the ES&S system was certified and tested as accurate. They were unwilling or unable to provide the requested documentation and referred us to the Secretary of State's office. Subsequent requests for this material, if it actually existed, went unanswered despite public comments by the Secretary that Oregon elections must be open, fair and transparent to citizens. Our group did manage to convince local officials to run a partial, rudimentary audit that confirmed the machine results on election night.
Vote fraud is as old as the Republic, but the old methods of intimidation, purchase, multiple voting, 'ghost' voters and ballot stuffing pales in comparison to the level of fraud available to malefactors using sophisticated electronic soft and firm ware. The old fraud was retail, the new fraud is wholesale, and can alter nationwide results in real time as we experienced in 2000 and 2004. Sometimes the old ways of doing things are best.