[Sosfbay-discuss] NIST says Paperless Electronic Voting Cannot Be Made Secure

[Wes Rolley]

http://dwb.sacbee.com/24hour/politics/story/3435642p-12603065c.html

*Federal agency faults voting machines
The Associated Press

*Last Updated 12:31 pm PST Friday, December 1, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) - Paperless electronic voting machines in widespread use 
across the country may be vulnerable to errors or sabotage and cannot be 
made secure, a draft report by a federal agency said.

The report by researchers at the influential National Institute of 
Standards and Technology said the paperless voting machines - 
essentially notebook computers programmed to display ballot images and 
record voter choices - "in practical terms cannot be made secure."

"Many people, especially in the computer engineering and security 
community, assert that the (voting machines) are vulnerable to 
undetectable errors as well as malicious software attacks," the report 
said.

A key weakness is that there is no audit mechanism or paper trail to 
verify election results other than what the machine itself reports, the 
report said.

"Potentially, a single programmer could 'rig' a major election," the 
report said.

After examining the issue, including volunteering as election workers at 
polling sites, NIST researchers said in their report that they concluded 
that they not know how to write "testable requirements" to make the 
machines secure and it is their recommendation that the machines "in 
practical terms cannot be made secure."

Many states bought the paperless electronic voting machines with money 
provided by Congress after the 2000 presidential election, whose 
disputed results went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Gail Porter, NIST's public affairs director, emphasized that the draft 
report is a "discussion document" whose conclusions and recommendations 
could change.

The report will be discussed at a meeting Monday by NIST's Technical 
Guidelines Development Committee at the agency's headquarters in 
Gaithersburg, Md. The committee is tasked under a law enacted by 
Congress in 2002 to advise the Election Assistance Commission on 
developing guidelines for voting systems.

Election experts applauded the report's findings.

"The new NIST report is confirmation that the mandatory verified voter 
trails the DNC and its Voting Rights Institute have championed are vital 
to restoring the confidence of the American people in their own 
democracy," Donna Brazile, chair of the Democratic National Committee's 
Voting Rights Institute, said in a statement Friday.

-- 
Wes Rolley		 
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