From the
New York Times
- Business
Machine Politics in the Digital Age
Sunday, November 9, 2003
By MELANIE WARNER
IN mid-August, Walden W. O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc., sat down at his computer to compose a letter inviting 100 wealthy and politically inclined friends to a Republican Party fund-raiser, to be held at his home in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year," wrote Mr. O'Dell, whose company is based in Canton, Ohio.
That is hardly unusual for Mr. O'Dell. A longtime Republican, ...
But it is not the only way that Mr. O'Dell is involved in the election process. Through Diebold Election Systems, a subsidiary in McKinney, Tex., his company is among the country's biggest suppliers of paperless, touch-screen voting machines.
Judging from Federal Election Commission data, at least eight million people will cast their ballots using Diebold machines next November. That is 8 percent of the number of people who voted in 2000, ...
Some people find Mr. O'Dell's pairing of interests - as voting-machine magnate and devoted Republican fund-raiser - troubling. ...
...
BUT the controversy surrounding Diebold goes beyond its chief executive's political activities. In July, professors at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University analyzed the software code for the company's touch-screen voting machines and concluded that there was "no evidence of rigorous software engineering discipline" and that "cryptography, when used at all, is used incorrectly."
...
A recent report for the state of Maryland by SAIC, an engineering and research firm, has added to concerns about the security of Diebold's systems. It recommended 17 steps that Maryland election officials could take to ensure better security when using Diebold's machines.
The company seized upon this as evidence that its systems, if used properly, were secure. But the report's overall assessment was not particularly upbeat. "The system, as implemented in policy, procedure and technology, is at high risk of compromise," SAIC wrote.
...
The controversy over security has started to affect Diebold's business. Last week, the office of the California secretary of state halted certification of Diebold's latest touch-screen voting machines, which individual counties are considering using. In Wisconsin, security concerns have soured election officials' perceptions of computerized voting. "We were already not strongly in favor of it, but the whole problem has changed when you're getting e-mails every week saying, 'You're not going to do this, right?' " said Kevin J. Kennedy, director of Wisconsin's election board.
...
NOT everyone is convinced that spending hundreds of millions of dollars to computerize the nation's voting is a good thing. The Johns Hopkins and SAIC reports are part of a growing chorus of criticism about the reliability and safety of paperless voting systems.
"There's a feeling in the computer scientist community of utter dismay about the state of voting-machine technology," said Douglas W. Jones, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa and a member of Iowa's board of examiners for voting machines.
David L. Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford, said: "If I was a programmer at one of these companies and I wanted to steal an election, it would be very easy. I could put something in the software that would be impossible for people to detect, and it would change the votes from one party to another. And you could do it so it's not going to show up statistically as an anomaly.''
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Rebecca Mercuri, a computer scientist and president of the consulting firm Notable Software, who has been studying election systems for 14 years, says the trouble with this system is that it is secretive. It prohibits anyone from knowing whether the data coming out of the terminals represents what voters actually selected. If someone were to challenge election results, the data in memory cards and the software running the voting terminals could be examined only by Diebold representatives.
...
"These companies are basically saying 'trust us,' " Ms. Mercuri said. "Why should anybody trust them? That's not the way democracy is supposed to work."
Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, is leading an effort to make computerized voting more transparent. His bill, introduced this year, would require that computerized voting systems produce a voter-verified paper ballot and that the software code be publicly available.
...
Diebold said it would be willing to attach ballot printers to touch-screen machines if customers wanted them. But Mr. Swidarski said elections boards were not clamoring for it. "We're agnostic to it," he said.
Mr. Swidarski disputed the assertion that Diebold's systems are vulnerable to tampering. Before each election, he said, the software goes through rigorous testing and certification by one of three companies contracted through the National Association of State Election Directors. Those companies "go through every line of code," he said. "It's an extensive process that takes several months, and then the machines go for testing at the state level."
Critics say that the certification process is not as thorough as the companies would have people believe, and that the resulting reports, like the technology, are not available for public inspection. This opacity is what worries detractors most.
"We know from Enron and WorldCom that when accounting is weak, crooks have been known to take over," Professor Jones said. "If vulnerabilities exist in any voting system for a long enough time, someone's going to exploit it."