$1.9 Million Study: E-Voting Machines Still Suck
Some security problems can be readily addressed by best practices, that is if anyone cares enough to implement them though. Election officials in Ohio seem to care but they are ahead of e-voting machine vendors. According to a $1.9 million study, the state is getting stiffed by poor security. From ComputerWorld:
The main problem, according to the report, is that while security and privacy standards generally exist for critical technology systems, "unfortunately ... the computer-based voting systems in use in Ohio do not meet computer industry security standards and are susceptible to breaches of security that may jeopardize the integrity of the voting process."
The report also makes recommendations, including:
* Move to a centralized counting of all votes where all ballot choices are sent electronically, rather than keeping track of votes in individual voting precincts. The idea, according to the report, is that a central ballot depository would be more secure by eliminating unnecessary and security-reducing local points of entry that could be infiltrated by intruders to change election results.* Require that all e-voting machines in Ohio be optical-scan machines, which use a paper ballot that is scanned electronically and tabulated after being filled out by a voter. Presently, most voting precincts in the state use direct-recording electronic (DRE) touch-screen e-voting machines, where voters make their candidate selections using a touch screen. A paper-verifiable record is then printed out next to the machine so the voter can confirm that the correct votes are about to be recorded.
* Require counties that use touch-screen machines to offer paper ballots to voters who don't want to vote using a DRE machine in the upcoming March 4 primary election.
I'm sure taxpayers in Ohio are going to be asking why their funds have gone to purchase machines from vendors that don't even know and or don't care to implement security best practices. This makes me wonder what the evaluation criteria was to pick those machines.
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