Text 17318, 97 rader
Skriven 2006-01-16 10:35:30 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: E-Voting
================
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/fred_grimm/13622609.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp



Paperless voting opens door for election stealing

BY FRED GRIMM
fgrimm@herald.com

Ion Sancho worries about an inside job.

Sancho, Leon County's supervisor of elections, allowed a couple of computer
scientists to try hacking into his voting system last year. With the same
access as one of Sancho's election workers, the scientists were able to
switch around votes willy-nilly.

''I'm positive that an eighth-grader could do this,'' computer science
professor Herbert Thompson told The Miami Herald after he redirected 5,000
votes from one hypothetical candidate to another.

In another test last month, Sancho's employees staged a mock election. They
voted 6-2 ''NO'' -- that Finnish computer expert Harri Hursti couldn't hack
their system. The vote count registered 7-1 ``YES.''

`NO EVIDENCE'

''The most amazing thing,'' Sancho said, was that the scientists erased all
signs that they had tampered with the computer code. ``There was no
evidence that anything was wrong unless you counted the paper ballots.''

The key words here: paper ballots. Sancho had refused to join the rush to
the paperless touch-screen systems that Florida's larger counties embraced
after the 2000 hanging chad debacle. Leon County voters mark a paper ballot
to be scanned and counted by computer.

Diebold, the manufacturer of Leon's optical scan system, roundly denounced
Sancho, suggesting he had slipped the hackers the company's secret computer
code. The scientists countered that they had plucked the code off the
Internet.

The company did boast that Sancho's hackers failed to penetrate the system
from outside the office. But Sancho found it ''very, very disquieting''
that one of his workers could steal an election.

If Ion Sancho is worried, South Floridians should be terrified.

Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and 12 other Florida counties use
touch-screen computer systems that may well be vulnerable to intruders. Who
knows? Florida's Secretary of State's office, which ought to be hiring its
own hackers, has left security concerns up to private vendors.

Touch-screen systems leave no paper trail. If someone suspects that ballot
boxes had been cyber-stuffed, elections officials have no way to know. In
huge urban election offices, just one crooked employee with an offshore
banking account could fix the vote. And some elections -- $50 million bond
issues or local approval of slot machines -- are worth stealing.

Best of all, from a crook's perspective, once an election's hacked, the
evidence disappears into cyberspace.

Pressure is mounting for Florida to follow 25 other states and require a
paper record. The coming solution will be $1,000 printers attached to each
touch-screen voting machine.

SECRET PROPERTY

But printers hardly fix the dilemma at the heart of high-tech voting.
Sancho points out that the computer codes remain the secret property of the
manufacturers. Private, for-profit, heavily politicized corporations --
with lobbying corps staffed by former public officials -- wield proprietary
control over the operating system behind Florida's elections.

''In smaller jurisdictions, the voting machine vendors run the entire
election. They lay out the ballot. They count the votes. It's entirely
legal,'' Sancho said.

Sancho, who is not registered with either political party, came into office
in 1988 on the heels of the state's greatest election fiasco (until the
2000 presidential election). On Sept. 2, 1986, scores of Leon County's old
lever machines failed. Levers didn't line up with candidate's names. Levers
jammed. Levers broke. Thousands of votes were misdirected. Voter
registration cards were found scattered in an empty field.

Since, Sancho has been downright militant about verifying votes. And
keeping vendors and politics out of the actual vote counting. But he said,
``I'm afraid that profits have been placed ahead of accountability in
Florida elections.''

If Ion Sancho is afraid, South Florida should be terrified.
[clip]

Perhaps Patriot boy should give him a lesson in the security of electronic
voting.

Secure, indeed.
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