Digest of electronic voting threats to Tuesday's election

The integrity of Tuesday's election is under threat. The threat lies in electronic voting machines. The majority of the news reports on electronic voting machine errors involve votes from the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama. We have begun to see a pattern of "vote-flipping," or vote-switching," from Barack Obama to John McCain. Television talk show host and media executive, Oprah Winfrey experienced voting on a machine that did not register her vote. As we see in a video at the upper right, she recounts her frustration with the voting machine.

While we are presently seeing more concern about Democratic votes flipping to the Republican candidate, corruption of vote integrity can swing either way. Just as this writer will doubt a McCain victory (after near universal polls giving safe margins to Obama), voters can doubt the legitimacy of Democratic victories. Republicans can doubt the legitimacy of the Democratic sweep of 2006; and they can cry foul this Tuesday should Obama win.
As a matter of principle, the electronic machines should be scrapped. We should return to the lever machines. These machines are still in use in New York City. They have served New York with very few major glitches for generations. We should not blindly rush to technology, simply because it is new. Technology-fetish is jeopardizing the legitimacy of our electoral democracy.

And now the digest of electronic voting trouble, with a mind to recent news:

Brennan Center and other places researched the vulnerabilities issue.
The generic term for electronic voting machines appears to be: digital recording electronic systems (DRE).
All states have electronic systems, except New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin. These states have combinations of electronic systems and more traditional systems. Only New York State retains lever pulling machines. Oregon has optically scanned mail-in ballots.
Click here for Pew Center on the States' chart on voting systems, by state,

“Colorado Independent” reports: County Clerk in one Colorado county quarantines voting machines.

Research sponsored by Common Cause:
--which cites June 2006 Brennan Center report on vulnerablities of machine hacking.

Cause of vote flipping.

Viruses can be planted in the ES&S machines.
As of May 2008, fears that machine could be virus-infected.

Some battleground –including Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania-- states use computers that were demonstrated in previous elections to have machines that were vulnerable to hacking:
2006 HBO documentary that documented problems that indicate problems with machines' integrity: Hacking Democracy.

iVotronic machines deemed vulnerable to virus-hacking and vote-flipping: “More confirmation of vote flipping by e-voting machines,” Under the Dome, April 19, 2007.

16 states carry the vulnerable iVotronic machines:
Suspicions that there is coincidence of where certain candidates do well, and where there are patterns of problematic voting: per Bev Harris, of Blackboxvoting.org: "I'm supposed to be nonpartisan," Harris said. "But I looked at a dozen states way before the primaries that I identified would have problems, and it's almost a 100 percent correlation with where (Sen. Hillary) Clinton has done well."Faulty Machines Ready to Count Your Vote,” Miller-McCune, May 12, 2008.

One Colorado county quarantined a problematic voting machine: Bradblog, 10/30/08 .

Other vote problems:
“Vote-Fraud Fears Fall Before Disenfranchisement Fear,” Miller-McCune, October 24, 2008, The decisions, either by judges or secretaries of state, bring to a close several of the legal battles detailed in the latest compendium of swing-state disputes Miller-McCune.com reported earlier this week, and focus on the right to vote trumping the fear of fraud.

Voters for winning candidates have more confidence in integrity of system in counting their vote, than voters for losing candidates: “Do Americans Trust Their Voting System? Miller-McCune, October 29, 2008 .

Distrustful citizens conduct their own exit polls: “Citizen Exit Poll Driven by Distrust” October 31, 2008 .

DEMOCRATIC PARTY MACHINERY and MEDIA
Democratic National Committee attention to issues of machines' vulnerability to hacking or flipping: none.
Major media, such as national television networks to these issues is null. Only more marginal outlets are giving attention to this issue. Type a Google news searches of the words "vote flipping" with the quote marks closing the quote. You will get minor media outlets. The most notable media outlets giving attention to the story include: MarketWatch, CNN International, Guardian [UK], and one New York Times story (albeit, at the date of October 24, this is dated; there needs to be an update on this story). There are no other nationally known newspapers, no major television networks giving attention to the story.
Where there is hardly any TV news attention, there is hardly any public consciousness on the issue.

Princeton prof: e-voting machines easily hackable

With election shenanigans fresh in our minds from 2004, shouldn't we be concerned over the integrity of voting machines. Furthermore, manufacturers and politicians have resisted requirements that electronic voting machines give receipts to the voter users. This would give the voter, and the greater public, a little bit more confidence in such machines. This is amidst recent reports, in several states, of vote flipping (or vote switching) by e-voting machines.

Princeton computer science professor Andrew Appel has publicized a 158 page report that criticizes certain e-voting machines as easily hackable, "Computerworld" reported October 27.
Todd R. Weiss, "Princeton report rips N.J. e-voting machines as easily hackable
Vendor challenges research, says its machines are safe and reliable"

With eight days to go before the presidential election, a report has been released by Princeton University and other groups that sharply criticizes the e-voting machines used in New Jersey and elsewhere as unreliable and potentially prone to hacking.

The 158-page report, which was ordered by a New Jersey judge as part of an ongoing four-year legal fight over the machines, says the e-voting machines can be "easily hacked" in about seven minutes by anyone with basic computer knowledge. Such hacking activity could enable fraudulent firmware to steal votes from one candidate and give them to another, the report said.

The controversy involves the Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H direct-recording electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems.

The report comes amid news stories in at least three states -- West Virginia, Texas and Tennessee -- where voters have told local election officials that they believe the e-voting machines they used tried to "flip" their votes to other candidates.

The AVC machines can be hacked by installing fraudulent software contained in a replacement chip that can be installed on the main circuit board, according to the report. Such a part replacement is very difficult to detect, it noted.

Andrew Appel, a Princeton University computer science professor who is one of the authors of the report, said that such security vulnerabilities cause doubts about the accuracy and reliability of the machines.

The plaintiffs, a group of public interest organizations, argue in their lawsuit against the state of New Jersey that the machines should be discarded because they can't meet state election law requirements for security and accuracy. State officials who back the machines argue that the machines are adequate for the job.

The lawsuit is expected to go to trial in January, but in the meantime, the court allowed the Princeton report to be released to the public.

The report gives details on how the machines could be manipulated by someone who wanted to change the results of the election, and it strongly criticizes the designs and security of the devices.

Read the 158 page report here, in pdf format.

Mysterious resignation at ES&S, maker of vote flipping machines in W Va

Several voters voters in early voting in West Virginia complained that their votes for Barack Obama flipped unwillingly to John McCain. The maker of the vote flipping (or vote switching) machines is ES&S. Mysteriously, the company's vice president, Gary Lee Greenhalgh, resigned abruptly in May, and neither he, nor the company, will say why he quit.

The Charleston Gazette inquired into the story:
Ron J. Nyden, "ES&S official left company in May"

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - On Thursday, Secretary of State Betty Ireland defended her selection of touch-screen voting machines by Election Systems & Software, after several voters complained the machines were switching their votes from Democrats to Republicans.

That same day, during a ceremony at the Capitol, Ireland presented a special award to Gary Lee Greenhalgh, the ES&S vice president who sold Ireland on the machines.

Ireland called Greenhalgh "a pioneer in the use of technology in the election process."

But Greenhalgh left the company mysteriously in May, and neither he nor company officials will say why.

And while Ireland praises both Greenhalgh and his former employer, other states have rejected ES&S voting machines because of alleged security and accuracy problems.

An independent study determined that ES&S touch-screen machines could be "compromised and modified without detection, conceivably occurring before, during or after an election," presenting "serious risks to election integrity."

In recent days, at least 14 voters from Jackson, Putnam, Berkeley, Ohio, Monongalia and Greenbrier counties have told The Charleston Gazette that ES&S machines switched their votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.

No one has contacted The Gazette to say a voting machine flipped Republican votes to Democratic candidates.

In each case, county poll workers helped the voters correct their ballots. But several worried that others might not notice switched votes.

Read the full October 26 Gazette article here.