What do the experts say about electronic voting?

[helderheid]

This was just completed - a short (one page, 2-sided) list of quotes by experts and famous persons on the problems of electronic vote counts - including references to original sources:

http://utahcountvotes.org/docs/WhatdotheExpertsSay.pdf

What do the Experts Say?

“Only real recounts (cross-checking paper records against official tabulations), not just rereading machine
totals, will resolve close elections.” October, 2006 The American Statistical Association
http://www.amstat.org/news/StatisticalIssuesInElections.pdf

“Computer viruses … can spread malicious software automatically and invisibly from
machine to machine during normal pre- and post-election activity” and “even careful forensic
examination of these records will find nothing amiss” “anyone who has physical access to a voting
machine or to a memory card.. in as little as one minute.” “some of these problems cannot be remedied
without replacing the machine’s hardware.” Princeton University Computer Scientist Ed Felton
http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/

“Technicians or election officials could be producing infected memory cards without any knowledge
of what they were doing.” “We’ll never have secure machines if the vendors succeed in keeping the
inner workings of their machines secret from the security experts…. Secrecy is not the road to
security.” “two attacks: a vote-altering attack and a Denial-of-Service attack” Yale University
Computer Scientist Dr. Michael Fischer
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6387

“Errors of (purely) electronic voting machines may often be undetectable and there are many
instances of (purely) electronic voting systems reporting highly improbable outcomes, forcing the
relevant voting officials to explain the seemingly impossible results” and “The current generation of
electronic (DRE) voting machines are not secure, do not provide voters with a way to know that their
votes are being tabulated correctly, and do not provide a mechanism for effective recounts when errors
arise. As such, they represent an unacceptable technical risk, regardless of how people feel about
them.” BYU & U of Utah Computer Scientists (Carter, Windley, Brundvand, Gopalakrishnan, Hanscom,
Jones, Lee, Regehr, Seamons, Shirley, Drake) http://utahcountvotes.org/voting_system_advice.pdf

“The basic problem of e-voting can be understood without an in-depth knowledge of computer
technology. Here is a helpful analogy: Suppose voters dictated their votes, privately and anonymously,
to human scribes, and that the voters were prevented from inspecting the work of the scribes. Few
would accept such a system, on simple common-sense grounds. Obviously, the scribes could
accidentally or intentionally mis-record the votes with no consequences. Without accountability, a
system is simply not trustworthy, whether or not computers are involved. “ and “You don't need a
Ph.D. in computer science to understand the basic problem with computerized voting. Computer
systems are so complex that no one really knows what goes on inside them. We don't know how to
find all the errors in a computer system; we don't know how to make sure that a system is secure or
that it hasn't been corrupted (possibly even by its designers); and we don't know how to ensure that the
systems in use are running the software they are supposed to be running.“ Stanford Computer
Scientist David Dill http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5789

“Diebold’s system is utterly unsecured. The entire cyber-security community is begging them to
come back to reality and secure our nation’s voting.” Pentagon Cyber-Security Advisor Stephen
Spoonamore http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Technology/story?id=2596705&page=2

“We conclude that this voting system is unsuitable for use in a general election.” Johns
Hopkins University Professor Avi Rubin in a paper presented at the 2004 IEEE Symposium on
Security and Privacy.

“There are no standards. There is no scientific research ..s there’s an erosion of voting rights implicit
in the inability to trust the technology that we use and if we were another country being analyzed by
America, we would conclude that this country is ripe for stealing elections and for fraud.” DeForest
Soaries, Former US Election Assistance Commission Chairman (appointed by Bush)

“Many of the hard drives and apparently all of the motherboards of the voting machines are Made in
China. China is known to be attacking the Dept of Defense, Commerce Dept and other government
computers. The motherboard controls the computer and hiding a malicious program in the boot sector
of a hard drive isn’t much of a trick, one has to assume that some or all of the Diebold voting
machines are potentially, even probably controlled by China (Security 101).” And “Diebold is based
on Microsoft Windows. No other operating system in the world is as subject to so many viruses,
Trojan horses, hack tools, worms, or other attacks..” and “Diebold has repeatedly used uncertified and
untested software and hardware in elections, making a mockery of even the weak certification and
testing procedures in place.” And “Diebold has repeatedly failed to correct known security flaws and
software bugs.” and “It has become easy to determine that a Diebold representative is dissembling.
His, or her lips are moving.” Dr. Charles Corry, Colorado Springs, CO, former IEEE (the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) member of the voting system guidelines committee for 4
years (& former Marine corporal)

“Some believe that computer touch screen machines are the future of electoral systems, but the
technology simply fails to pass the test of reliability. As anyone who uses one can attest, computers
break down, get viruses, lose information, and corrupt data. We know this to be the case, and so we
back-up our files to ensure nothing important is lost. Paper ballots serve as the ultimate back-up for
our elections, providing secure and permanent verification of the will of the people….When a vote is
cast, a vote should be counted. With paper ballots we will have a record. With paper ballots the
fundamental principle of one person, one vote is safe.” Democratic Governor Bill Richardson – NM
http://utahcountvotes.org/US/GovRichardsonLtr20060301.pdf

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) called for the state to scrap its $106 million electronic voting
apparatus and revert to a paper ballot system for the November <2006> election. "When in doubt, go
paper, go low-tech," he said. Ehrlich advocated leasing optical scan machines that use paper ballots…
Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich – MD Washington Post Thursday, September 21, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/20/AR2006092001356.html

“All three voting systems have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities, which pose a real
danger to the integrity of national, state, and local elections.” and “Few jurisdictions have
implemented any of the key countermeasures that could make the least difficult attacks against voting
systems much more difficult to execute successfully.”
The Brennan Center (NYU Law School) Experts include statistical consultant, professor University of California
at Davis; Electronic Privacy Information Center; Professor Stanford University, PhD, Cyber Defense Agency LLC; former
CEO of F-Secure PLC; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Chair of the California Secretary of State’s Voting
Systems Technology Assessment and Advisory Board; prof. University of Iowa; PhD NIST; PhD, NIST; prof. MIT;
Former Chief Security Officer, Microsoft and eBay; Counterpane Internet Security; PhD, formerly of the Computer
Science; Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT; prof. University of California at Berkeley; prof. Rice University;
Electronic Frontier Foundation
http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/SecurityExecSum7-3.pdf

“It seems that integrity and honesty aren’t terribly important at Diebold…” and “We send people to death row
onn flimsier and more circumstantial evidence…” “How much are you willing to pay for secure trustworthy
elections?” “What more would these machines have to do to prove they’re dangerous, whistle Dixie while they
miscount our votes?” Andrew Kantor, technology writer for USAToday, former editor PC Magazine and
Internet World. http://www.usatoday/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2006-09-29-diebold_x.htm

[helderheid]

1. kick kick kick

[porphyrian]

2. Yeah, that gets a kickin'. - n/t

[helderheid]

3. thanks!

:hi:

[helderheid]

4. kick

[ProgressiveEconomist]

5. In one of the news reports I've seen recently, a Carnegie-Mellon

professor (who's also a Dean--can't recall his name) said something really deep:

How can you expect a complex software version that's used for the first time once a year or so to be reliable? If complex software is used EVERY DAY, you might expect it to become reliable after several months of use and tweaking. But once a year is just incredibly wrongheaded planning that never can be expected to work.

So any reliable software/hardware solution for voting must be very simple--like optical scan machines that provide immediate feedback to voters and precinct-level tally sheets that can be checked against their paper trails for key races on election night.