Jury still out on e-voting
Touted as an antidote to the hanging chad, e-voting solution not proven, experts say
BY MICHAEL HARDY
Nov. 10, 2003

Legislation that could add voter-verified paper ballots to controversial touch-screen electronic voting machines remains stalled in a House committee, despite 61 cosponsors.

More and more election authorities are buying the machines, which are made by several companies. They are spurred by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA). The law provides funding to replace outdated punch card and lever systems in an effort to avoid repeating the Florida chad controversy that kept the 2000 presidential election in limbo for weeks.

…The legislation, called the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003, introduced by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) in May, would require that the machines, generically called direct recording electronic (DRE) machines, print out a paper record of each vote so the voter can make sure it is correct. The printed ballot would be stored at the polling place and used if a manual recount or an audit of the results is needed.

Although the bill has attracted 61 cosponsors ? all Democrats ? it is still in the House Administration Committee. The bill has yet to attract any Republican support, according to Holt's staff.

…In July, the Johns Hopkins team fanned the flames with the results of their analysis of Diebold AccuVote-TS code, obtained from an unofficial Web site. Maryland officials, who were close to finalizing a $55 million purchase of machines to use statewide, asked Science Applications International Corp. to perform a second analysis.

SAIC officials confirmed that the Hopkins researchers had analyzed the code properly, but said that many of the risks could be avoided or minimized by not connecting the machines to a network and by implementing security protocols and processes for election officials and poll workers.

SAIC's report, dated Sept. 2, echoed Diebold's criticism. "While many of the statements made by Mr. Rubin were technically correct, it is clear that Mr. Rubin did not have a complete understanding of the state of Maryland's implementation of the system and the election process controls or environment, [which] reduce or eliminate many of the vulnerabilities identified in the Rubin report," the SAIC report states.

Ultimately, Maryland officials completed the purchase, accepting 12 of SAIC's 17 recommendations. Diebold officials agreed to make three software changes to increase security but only for machines sold in Maryland.