I wrote a story for Kuro5hin. It's called "Do we really want black box voting machines?" Here's the intro:
New computerized voting machines are quietly being rolled in across the country, promising to put an end to voting irregularities and "dimpled chads" forever. These machines, however, are doing just the opposite -- rarely providing a verifiable paper trail, with all inner workings undisclosed and classified as "trade secrets." Many concerned citizens and notable computer scientists (Leiserson, Rivest, Schneier, for example) are attempting to lead a charge against these new machines, but their voices aren't being heard.
Since the 2000 election debacle, new computerized, "error-proof" voting machines have already been installed in many parts of the country, and more are on their way -- all of them commercial black box machines with no verifiable paper trail. Many districts used machines from ES&S and Diebold in the 2002 election, resulting in reports from election workers and even voting machine engineers themselves of inconsistencies and security flaws. Then The Hill published recently that Sen. Charles Hagel of Nebraska, winner of one of Georgia's biggest upsets in history, served as chairman of ES&S for several years in the early '90s until 1995, and continues to be a large investor. Conspiracy theory or not, the idea of a politician running his state's largest voting machine supplier prompted interest from the Senate Ethics Committee.
As districts have attempted to modernize, computerized voting machines have become big business, but also a dirty business. Vendors aggressively lobby local county election officials, using overwhelming political connections (and, too often, bribes 1, 2) to get contracts. Vendors have not disclosed many technical details on their machines, and even in one case fired an engineer who brought up security concerns. A Diebold FTP site containing software patches for counties was, until last month, still accessible to the world and insecure.
All this news has given David Dill of Stanford, along with famous CS luminaries including Charles Leiserson, Ronald Rivest, and Bruce Schneier, reason for concern. They've signed an online petition urging caution on implementing new computerized voting machine technologies, and are looking for additional endorsements from CS and EE "technologists" (i.e., YOU) nationwide. Dill is doing his part by working with officials at Santa Clara County (home to Stanford) to keep unverifiable machines out of his county.
On his site, Dill argues that a voter-verified paper audit trail is necessary to insure that votes are being correctly recorded. He notes that vendors are currently counting on "security through obscurity," and that Federal and State certification processes are much less secure than DoD or other standards.
What can you do? Because these decisions are made at the local level, you should call your county election officials and find out what kind of voting machines they're using, or planning on buying. Make sure your county doesn't use a DRE (direct recording electronic) system. Finally, sign the Stanford petition and see your name listed alongside the "L" and "R" in CLR!
Posted by cce at February 27, 2003 11:26 AM | TrackBack