www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60713,00.html
Election officials around the country have been switching to new computerized polling machines with the hope of avoiding a repeat of the Florida debacle over punch-card voting that marred the 2000 presidential election. But a training session for poll workers in Alameda County suggests problems other than hanging chads could surface this time around. Alameda County uses 4,000 touch-screen voting machines manufactured by Diebold Election Systems. But last month, officials in Maryland released a report saying that the Diebold machines were at high risk of compromise due to security flaws in the software. Despite this, officials in Alameda County said their policies and procedures for using the machines will secure them against voting fraud. However, information obtained by Wired News at a training session for Alameda County poll workers indicates that security lapses in the use of the equipment and poor worker training could expose the election to serious tampering. Voting-machine experts say the lapses could allow a poll worker or an outsider to change votes in machines without being detected. And because other problems inherent in the software wont be fixed before the recall, experts say sophisticated intruders can intercept and change vote tallies as officials transmit them electronically. The training session revealed the following: Officials leave voting machines at polling stations days before the election. The machines contain memory cards with ballots already loaded on them. This means before the election, someone could alter the ballot file in such a way that voters would cast votes for the wrong candidate without knowing it. The memory card rests behind a locked door on the side of the voting machine. But supervisors receive a key to the compartment the weekend before the election. Poll supervisors are selected with no background checks and are given keys to buildings where they can access the machines several days before the election. The machines, worth around $3,000 each, are locked on a trolley at polling stations with only a bicycle lock. The combination, which anyone could crack in a couple of tries, is the same for every polling station in the county and is given to poll supervisors during their training. Although the machines have two blue tamper-resistant ties threaded through holes in their carrying cases, the ties can easily be purchased on the Internet . Supervisors open at least one case the night before the election to charge the machine inside, which means the case remains unsealed overnight. While leaving equipment unattended overnight might be fine if the county were using punch-card machines, experts say electronic machines raise the security risks tenfold because minor changes to the machines can result in changes to millions of votes. David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University and critic of electronic voting machines that dont provide a verifiable paper trail, calls the information about the countys security jaw-dropping. The Maryland study emphasizes page after page how essential physical security is to these machines. We dont know everything there is to know about these machines and there are probably attacks to these machines that people havent even thought of yet. Alameda County, a Democratic stronghold that includes the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, converted to all-electronic voting last year at a cost of more than $12 million. In addition to Alameda, one other small county will be using 200 of the Diebold AccuVote-TS machines in the recall. Two other counties will use touch-screen machines from another manufacturer. But three weeks ago, a report PDF commissioned by the state of Maryland found that flaws in the software could open an election to rigging. While Alameda County couldnt fix problems with the software before the recall, Elaine Ginnold, the countys assistant registrar of voters, said after the report was released that the procedures for using the machines would protect the systems from tampering. The county has no plans to place tamper-resistant tape over memory card compartments on the machines, a step that authors of the Maryland report recommended. Therefore, anyone with access to the machines can pick the lock on the compartment or open it with a key. The password for the card used to close down a machine at the end of an election is printed in Diebold manuals, which workers keep in their homes over the election weekend. The password is the same easy-to-guess number that opens combination locks securing machines at polling stations. We have to have something thats easy for poll workers to remember, Ginnold said. The training session for about 30 poll workers, held in an Oakland warehouse, lasted two-and-a-half hours. In a 20-minute, hands-on phase, workers practiced setting up machines, voting on them and shutting them down. Tom Wilson, a poll supervisor who attended the training, said he signed up to work in the polls because of problems in the last presidential race. But Wilson was concerned he did not have enough hands-on training with the machines to serve voters effectively. He added, I feel reasonably confident about myself, but not necessarily confident about every other supervisor. Given the level of training, theres still a lot of room for human error. Story continued on Page 2 Page 1 of 3 next Related Stories California County Keeps E-Vote Sep.
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