Controversies over electronic voting are nothing new. Each year here at Georgetown there are calls to abandon on-line voting for GUSA elections in favor of paper ballots. Only through constant improvement in its reliability and transparency does the on-line system remain the primary option.
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for Diebold Election Systems, Inc. which provides e-voting machines to many states including Maryland. Lawmakers led by State Delegate Anne Healey in Annapolis have voted to replace the Diebold touchscreen e-voting system with optical scan paper ballots for the 2006 elections.
Security flaws in the Diebold system are lawmakers’ main concern. Critics of the Diebold system in California and Maryland cite reports that vote totals are easily manipulated. The Maryland resolution has banned the use of the Diebold machines until they are modified to provide a paper vote record.
Diebold’s reaction to these questions has been less than ideal. Diebold claims that the voting systems are reliable and that any security concerns are minimal. Compare this to the reaction at Georgetown to the 2003 GUSA presidential election. Following that election, there were concerns that vote totals could be manipulated by hackers and that people could vote multiple times. While on a much smaller scale than state-wide voting, the concerns were similar to those around Diebold’s system.
As a response to security concerns, the Saxa Server administrators, myself included, went before the GUSA Assembly and offered a challenge to critics. We posted the source code to our voting system online and offered a cash reward to anyone who could successfully compromise the system. In the past three years, no one has taken us up on the offer.
On the other hand, Diebold has been less than forthcoming with opening their source code, even when required by state officials.
In 2003, Maryland contracted Science Applications International Corporation to assess the risks of the Diebold touchscreen voting system. SAIC’s final report was delivered to the state of Maryland in September 2003, and it found that Diebold’s election software failed to meet most basic standards of security. Furthermore, SAIC reported that the system was at high risk of compromise.
Controversy over the Diebold voting system has been brewing for over three years. Also in September 2003, a collection of internal Diebold memos were leaked on the Internet. These memos were not flattering to Diebold, as they showed many within the company were aware of flaws in the system and had done little to correct them.
Computerized voting offers many advantages over paper ballots, such as instantaneous vote totaling and improved accessibility for the handicapped. As the state of Maryland has realized, however, serious questions remain about the integrity of such a system.
Paper ballots can be a logistical nightmare in the event of a recount, but they do offer the option of a recount. With the controversies over vote counts in both the 2000 and 2004 elections, the integrity of the vote count in the November elections is of the utmost importance to many state officials, and rightfully so.
