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E-voting safer -- but safe enough?
By: CHRIS BAGLEY - Staff Writer | ∞
When some 200,000 voters in Riverside County go to the polls Tuesday, they'll cast votes on a computerized voting system that is subject to an ever-larger number of safeguards, but that continues to generate controversy and demands for additional security.
Riverside County used touch-screen voting terminals in a San Jacinto municipal election in August 1999, and became the first county in California to do so on a large scale that November. By the 2000 presidential election, every polling place in the county was equipped with them.
The chaos that paper ballots created elsewhere that year ---- most notably in Florida ---- hastened the adoption of touchscreens around the country, but it also showed Americans how flaws in voting systems could leave even the results of a presidential election in question.
Since then, more and more U.S. cities and counties have begun using touchscreens. By November 2004, about 50 million ---- or 29 percent ---- of the nation's voters were registered in counties that use touchscreens, according to Election Data Services Inc., a consulting firm. Recent studies have estimated that another 10 million to 20 million U.S. voters will use touch screens for the first time Tuesday.
At the same time, voters' distrust of them remains surprisingly strong. Several states and counties have abandoned touchscreens in the last two years.
About 80 percent of Americans believe that election officials shouldn't rely solely on the machines and their proprietary software, according to a poll of 1,018 adults conducted in August by Zogby International.
In a Gallup survey of 526 likely voters last month, 46 percent of registered voters expressed a "great deal" of confidence in electronic voting machines, with 34 percent expressing a "fair amount" and 19 percent expressing "not much." Paper ballots fared slightly worse, with 38 percent of voters expressing "great confidence" and 22 percent expressing "not much."
The distrust has been fueled by people ranging from conspiracy theorists to voters who have experienced actual glitches with the machines. Additionally, several computer scientists have demonstrated how ---- in the absence of thorough oversight ---- the computers can be hacked and vote tallies changed on a large scale, though no such hacking attempt has been documented in an actual election.
In California, new regulations have aimed to boost confidence and provide reliable backup to the electronic machines. This year's primary elections, in June, were the first to require a paper printout of each vote cast on the electronic machines. Such printouts stay inside the machines and are fished out in the event of a recount.
A random 1 percent of those printouts are counted in every race as a check of the reliability of the electronic tally. A similar requirement has existed for 40 years, but it was just last year that the state Legislature applied it explicitly to touch-screen systems.
"We've made a huge amount of progress in California over the last six years," said Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit California Voter Foundation. "But we still have a long way to go."
The entire nation is a patchwork of voting systems. In several states, such as Georgia and Nevada, every county uses touch screens.
Alabama, Michigan and several other states don't allow them. In Oregon, a voter marks and then mails in a paper ballot or hand-delivers it to the local county elections office.
Many other states are themselves patchworks of voting systems. California's secretary of state has certified a range of voting machines. Most counties use touchscreens made by Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, as Riverside County does; by Ohio-based Diebold Inc., which San Diego County uses; or by Election Systems & Software of Omaha.
Some of the same counties ---- and others ---- use what are known as "optical scan" ballots. Voters indicate their choices by filling in circles or squares on the ballots; an electronic machine scans and counts them.
California's voting systems, as a whole, compare favorably to most other states' in terms of security and ease of use, Alexander said. Still, she bemoaned the wide variations among the counties, saying that too many have low security standards or don't make voting as easy as they could.
One example of that variety is in the practice of posting the vote counts from each precinct at the polling place. The California Elections Code appears to require the practice, which goes back at least to the 1960s, but elections officials in more than half of the counties in the state have given it up, saying the requirement applied only to machines in use in the 1960s.
Such posting is intended to allow citizen watchdog groups to doublecheck the tallies generated by machines at the precinct against the tallies produced by a central counter.
Following demands from a group of activists, Riverside County Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore said last month that poll workers at about three-quarters of the county's 600 polling places would have to post their vote tallies. For security and privacy reasons, polls at schools and private residences would be exempt.
Tom Courbat, a Murrieta resident who is leading the group in a poll-monitoring project, praised that move and several others Dunmore has made this year. For both the June and November elections, Dunmore convened a semi-official Election Observer Panel representing political parties and community groups, as state election code requires.
"We believe they would not have happened if we had not been in the forefront and pushed," Courbat said.
Still, Courbat and members of his group, Democracy for America-Temecula Valley, have complained that Dunmore has responded too slowly or not at all to other demands for more public oversight. The group members have recently addressed several Board of Supervisors meetings during periods for open public comment, leading to testy exchanges with supervisors and the county's chief executive officer, Larry Parrish. Third District Supervisor Jeff Stone called the group a "mockery of democracy" at a board meeting last month.
"You won't be happy until you can substitute your judgment for Barbara Dunmore's and everybody else's," Parrish told Courbat at the board's meeting Tuesday.
One issue at hand that day was another state law dating from the days of paper ballots, a requirement that citizens be able to watch the counting process. Riverside County elections officials have allowed observers to view employees as they operate the computer that tallies the votes, but Courbat and his group have protested that observers aren't allowed close enough to read the computer monitors.
Nonetheless, Alexander said, Riverside and most other counties have demanded higher standards for voting systems' security and usability than most other states.
Under Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, for example, California became one of the first states in the nation to require extensive testing of new voting machines under conditions similar to what they face in real elections, Alexander said.
The requirements that touch-screen systems produce paper records ---- and that voters be able to check them before leaving the booth ---- were also among the first in the nation, when ordered by McPherson's predecessor in 2003 and codified in 2004 by bipartisan legislation.
The bill requiring those paper records to be used to check the machines' accuracy, too, was one of the first such bills in the nation.
Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach, has led the state Senate's elections committee, authoring that bill and a dozen others. She is challenging McPherson in his bid for re-election.
In their final days of campaigning, the two candidates have touted their records of helping to secure elections. McPherson appeared in San Diego on Tuesday to express confidence in electronic voting machines, which voters there will use this week for the first time since 2004. He was scheduled to make a similar appearance in Riverside and Ontario today.
Bowen, for her part, has sent out several recent press releases, criticizing what she calls McPherson's failure to protect the state's voting systems sufficiently from fraud. On its Web site, her campaign has posted a "10-point plan to restore confidence in California's voting system."
Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2615, or cbagley@californian.com.
CC wrote on Nov 4, 2006 1:08 AM:The US Elections Assistance Commission Chair resigned last year. He feels that HAVA made our election process less secure. It's time to return to paper ballots, counted by hand at each voting site, results posted at each voting site, and then posted on a central website. Then all results can be cross-checked by those who want to defend our democracy. The biggest concern is that voting machines are provided by vendors with overt political alliances and even our government does not know what's going on inside them. Banks know that it's white collar crime like embezzlement that is their big concern. The same goes for electronic voting. A vote stolen here or there is no big deal. But the large scale vote theft that is possible with voting machines is a grave concern for our democracy. An interview with Rev. DeForest Soaries, Former U.S. Elections Assistance Commission Chair, is available at VoteTrustUSA.org.
Jake wrote on Nov 4, 2006 8:32 AM:Sigh.... You know what - people scared of e-voting are the smae ones who won't use their credit cards online because they fear that the big Internet boogie monster is going to steal their identity. The media has done such a great job of demonizing information transfer over the Net that eveyone is screaming "the sky is falling, the sky is falling".
morty wrote on Nov 4, 2006 9:31 AM:I Think voting by mail is good.we did that.
Let Me Vote Online wrote on Nov 4, 2006 10:04 AM:Sure there are some security issues to address, but the technology is there. Paper ballots are cumbersome, detrimental to our environment and just as vulnerable to being counted by someone with their own political agenda.
To Jake wrote on Nov 4, 2006 12:56 PM:Ain't that the truth!
Roberto wrote on Nov 4, 2006 1:17 PM:I'm not afraid of e-voting. The problem is with lack of checks and balances. If we are going to allow e-voting, it should at least be accurate and concise. Corrupt Riverside County have some splaining to do.
Diane wrote on Nov 4, 2006 2:53 PM:For those unable or unwilling to find out the facts about these machines, check for the little "yellow" button on the back of all Sequoia Edge Machines, it allows for someone (unscrupulous)to put the machine in manual mode and allows for multiple votes. If you don't believe that then ask yourself on Election Day why our Secretary of State had to post massive warnings about tampering with elections. Don't just believe what I say instead Google "yellow button on Sequoia Edge Machine" and read for yourself. Computer scientists aren't boogie men afraid of identity theft. Why wouldn't this concern anyone across party lines?
The danger: wrote on Nov 4, 2006 3:20 PM:Is real. You just don't know because you don't have a basis of understanding the issues. Any hacker could do it with most systems.
To Diane wrote on Nov 4, 2006 3:56 PM:Nothing that has anything to do with Party Lines concerns me in the slightest ... I'm not one of those sheep that need to be led in someone else's direction. There are many things in life that are possible, but also highly improbable. A computer system created by humans is just as subject to corruption as paper ballots counted by humans with their own agenda. Think that's not possible? Think again!
I know what they did last summer... wrote on Nov 4, 2006 10:48 PM:The Sequoia e-voting system used in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties is owned by a company called Smartmatic. Smartmatic is owned by a consortium of off-shore interests, with 85% ownership held by Venezuelan businessmen who have known close ties with President Hugo Chavez. In Venezuela, the Sequoia e-voting system is also used. The readers may recall, Hugo Chavez has stated publicly that he believes President Bush is "the devil", and he is VERY serious in his efforts to undercut the best interests of the U.S. In 2004, Hugo Chavez faced a recall in Venezuela. As voters went to bed, the tallies were showing Chavez being RECALLED by a strong 60% to 40% margin. Everyone was sure it was over for Chavez. HOWEVER, when the sun rose, miraculously Chavez RETAINED his presidency by a nearly 60% to 40% margin, a statistical impossibility. During the night, before “official” results were announced, votes started coming in to retain Chavez first by a 10 to 1 margin, then 20 to 1, then 50 to 1 and ultimately at a rate of 100 to 1 to retain Chavez. These “votes” were captured, counted and reported on Sequoia voting machines. Machines owned by the company that clearly had and has very close ties to Hugo Chavez. The same type (perhaps a different model – say an “Accord” instead of a “Civic”) of machines used right here in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.
What are they up to? wrote on Nov 4, 2006 10:49 PM:The e-voting machines use SECRET (the corporations call it “proprietary”) software that not even the Registrar of Voters (RoV) is allowed to view. The initial testing of the machines and the software is done by PRIVATE companies (so-called “testing labs”), paid BY Sequoia to issue reports certifying the machines to be “fit for use” (called “federal qualification”). Only Sequoia gets to review the reports prior to issuance, and since Sequoia is the client of the testing labs, Sequoia has full authority to demand that any negative comments be stricken prior to the report being issued. And it is reported that any number of problems, say for example the “yellow button”, get “un-published” and never see the light of day, as the labs are paid by Sequoia, NOT the federal government nor any unbiased entity. The reports from the labs ALWAYS find the machines and the secret software that runs them to be fit for use by the voting public.
Riverside actions so far wrote on Nov 4, 2006 10:51 PM:It was only one month ago that SAVE R VOTE, working in conjunction with the majority of the officially-appointed Election Observer Panel (EOP) members in Riverside County, put enough pressure on the RoV to FORCE her to print the election results at the precincts, as required by law. This after the RoV REFUSED to post precinct results at the polls in the June primary, even after the CA Secretary of State’s office rejected the RoV’s request for a waiver. This posting is critical in providing a check and balance on a system operating on secret software – it gives citizens the opportunity to see immediately what the voting machines say was the outcome, and then compare that printed outcome from each machine with what the main computer (central tabulator) reports to be the results hours or days later. This refusal to post violated federal and state laws and regulations and in fact, the very requirements of the certification document that legitimizes the election. Even now, the RoV still refuses to post precinct results at the schools and private residences used as polling places. The lame excuses used included “they might blow away”, “it could endanger the students” and “unsavory characters might come around to view the results”. The bottom line is - the RoV and the entire County of Riverside legislative body (the Board of Supervisors or BoS) remain in violation of the law if the results are not posted at the schools and residences. A simple solution is to place a sign in the front lawn of each residential polling place, similar in size to the many candidate signs that adorn the front lawns of many residences post the results on those signs. The same can be done at the schools. But the county continues to resist compliance with the law, using weak excuses and calling those who demand compliance “insane” and “dishonest”, to quote two epithets used by CEO Larry Parrish at last Tuesday’s Board meeting (on video on the BoS archives Web site) when Tom Courbat testified during the public comments session.
What's happening and why can't we watch? wrote on Nov 4, 2006 10:53 PM:Riverside County absolutely REFUSES to allow citizens to view the counting of our votes in the central tabulator room on election night. OUR votes, intended to be counted in PUBLIC, are counted in secret. The RoV will say that the public can observe through windows. What they don’t tell you is that the windows look into the BACKS of the computer terminals used to process the 3,000+ memory cards from all the e-voting machines as they come in throughout Election night. They won’t tell you that no citizen is allowed to view the error messages and see any corrective action the county workers take in processing those error messages. They won’t tell you what the real reason is if the main computer shuts down for an hour and then suddenly starts up again. This is a secret closed system that insures that the citizens see and are told only what they “need to know”. It is a “Father Knows Best” mindset that relegates citizens to the status of subjects of the rulers of the “Inland Empire”.
Who says this is a problem, and what should we do? wrote on Nov 4, 2006 10:53 PM:We can stand by and sleep through all of this, or we can stand up for our rights of a free, open and transparent government. If we sleep much longer, the dream will become the nightmare of the loss of our democracy. If you doubt this, if you believe as I once did, that it can’t happen here, and that we should just “trust” our “selected” leaders without the “verify” portion of “Trust but Verify” philosophy touted by President Reagan, you are sadly mistaken. It is taking place throughout the U.S. and will be exposed by thousands of citizen reporters shooting videos, taking pictures and documenting the e-voting train wreck that will occur on November 7th. For incredible coverage, go to www.bradblog.com and www.blackboxvoting.org. Lastly, check out the CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight program that been covering this in an explosive series of over 40 episodes of “Democracy at Risk” and the new HBO special just released entitled “Hacking Democracy”.
Why are our votes counted by Venezuela? wrote on Nov 5, 2006 12:22 AM:Sequoia Systems, owned by Venezuelan nationals with close ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez counts and reports the votes in Riverside and San Bernardino counties using secret software. Not even the Registrar of Voters is allowed to see the software. The testing of the machines is done by "independent testing labs" that are actually private companies PAID by Sequoia to issue reports favorable to them. Any unfavorable aspects of the machines and software is "redacted" or blacked out, so that only the favorable parts of the testing are shared with Federal regulators, state regulators, or county election officials. Why do we tolerate this privatization of OUR votes by foreign nationals? This is far worse than having our ports operated by the Arabs. OUR electoral system should belong to the people of this country, not to some anti-American foreign government.
Who owns us? wrote on Nov 5, 2006 4:30 AM:Venezuelans own the company (Smrtmatic) that owns Sequoia. They count our votes on secret software. Nothing to be concened about. Nothing to see here. Move along now. Keep moving Dig deeper A bit more all's well Really! Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss. You have just entered - The Twilight Zone!
CC wrote on Nov 5, 2006 6:09 PM:There is nothing improbable about vote theft with electronic voting machines. Exit polls showed Kerry winning in a landslide in the last election. We have voting machines that are coming from business owners with a political agenda. For example, the head of Diebold promised to deliver Ohio for the Republicans during the last presidential election. Voting machine software is proprietary and nobody - not even our government - knows what's going on in there. While election officials were blandly assuring us that we needed to just *trust* voting machines in the last presidential election, I saw a demonstration on TV where someone flipped votes on the central tabulating PC in just a few minutes.
Exit Polls? wrote on Nov 6, 2006 6:16 AM:Oh Please ... you can't seriously think those are accurate do you? They're subject to the person collecting the results, the people providing the results and the people reporting the results. Maybe the majority of people who responded said they voted for Kerry and maybe they did. But maybe they lied. How many people wouldn't answer? I know I don't. My vote is no one's business but mine. I certainly would have loved it if Bush wouldn't have won, but all this conspiracy theorizing going on is really making me crazy!
Get Your Facts Straight wrote on Nov 6, 2006 7:59 AM:To all the Chicken Littles writing in, get your facts straight before making any more fools of yourselves than you already have. Independent testing laboratories are just what the name implies.... Independent. Have any of you ever heard of UL or UTL? Probably not. The system developers are required to hire these testing labs to perform the tests to the lab's specifications, which, in turn, are based on the HAVA systems requirements. Do yourselves a favor and work in the polling locations just once. I challenge any of you to try to get away with even pressing a button that you should not be pressing, or opening a door that you should not be opening. If you can, then you are working in a conspiring evironment, and NO ballot, paper or otherwise would be protected from fraud.
Old Fart wrote on Nov 6, 2006 12:48 PM:E-voting is fine ...I have no real problem with the concept ...but there needs to be some real security to repvent inadvertant or purposeful tampering ...and there needs to be accountability. When you read about a place that has E-voting and they counted 25,000 votes for a town with 12,000 people, that tends to say there's some inaccurracies with the E-voting system. And the lack of any type of "receipt" makes some folks uncomfortable. Can't blame 'em either. People like to have some assurance their vote is counted. When they thing or guy you voted for loses and then you hear they lost a bunch of votes ...which may or may not have affected the outcome ...that tends to piss people off just a bit. We should be more advanced than the days of "vote early and vote often". So yes ...E-voting is great ... but lets have a backup method when the power goes out and lets have some serious quality in security measures and accountability to ensure everyone's vote gets counted.
Crabbytoad wrote on Nov 6, 2006 9:22 PM:There seems to be a lot of valid concerns regarding e-voting. I have only one question to which so far, I have not received an answer from any elected official or Barbara Dunmore. Why does Barbara Dunmore refuse to allow citizens to view the counting of the vote process? I equate that to me taking a bag of money to the bank and the bank secretly counting the money outside of my presence. And when they return and tell me that I have $5.00 in the bag, the only reassurance they can provide me is that "we have tested the counting process in the past" and to "trust us as to the accuracy of the total." SORRY. That just doesn't sit right with me. WHY THE SECRECY WHEN COUNTING THE VOTES???
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