POLITICS Critics raise concerns on voting technology BY IAN DONNIS

Although hanging chad will be remembered as one of the signature elements of the 2000 presidential election, some critics say the widespread move to electronic voting is hardly a guarantee of cleaner elections. In fact, the New York Times reported in July that the software underpinning many high-tech voting machines contains significant flaws that could enable voters to cast extra ballots and allow poll workers to change ballots without detection.

A team at Johns Hopkins University reviewed software from Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which has more than 30,000 voting machines in use in the US. Researcher Adam Stubblefield says the machines, which voters make use of with smart cards, can be fooled by anyone with about $100 worth of computer equipment. "With what we found, practically anyone in the country — from a teenager on up — could produce these smart cards that could allow someone to vote as many times as they like," Stubblefield told the Times.

Several advocacy groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the League of Women Voters (LWV) of the United States, have indicated, however, that concerns about election fraud stemming from Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines are overstated. As the LWV commented, "It must be remembered that DREs are not an election system unto themselves; they are simply an instrument within a complex election system. The key is to design an overall system that builds in multiple checks making it improbable that the system will be tampered with."

In a statement responding to the Johns Hopkins study, Diebold also faulted the researchers for not using the company’s current code and failing to include voting authorities, like secretaries of state and state boards of election, which control the voting process within their jurisdiction. "America’s elections history has been one of continuous improvement, and Diebold has been at the forefront of creating standardized systems that ensure the highest degree of accuracy and integrity for voters," the company said.

For his part, Secretary of State Matthew Brown remains unconcerned by the findings of the Hopkins study. "I don’t think it says much about the integrity of the DRE concept," Brown says in a recent interview. "Diebold is one vendor, and 27 states are currently using some form of the DRE machine. I’m confident we can find a machine that is tested and proven to be secure."

Brown credits one of his predecessors, US Representative James Langevin, for implementing the use of optical scanning machines for Rhode Island elections in 1996. "Our optical scan machines have a strong, proven track record for being accurate, extremely accurate," he says. A new federal law, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires states to put at least one DRE machine into each polling place by 2006. Referring to the thorough research that Langevin did before backing the optical scanners, Brown says, "I’m going to go through the same type of rigorous process and make sure we get [DRE] machines here that are 100 percent fraud-proof and accurate."