Posted on 15-10-2003

Fears of More U.S. Electoral Chaos
By Andrew Gumbel, Independent UK, 14 October 2003

Next year's US presidential election may be compromised by new voting
machines that computer scientists believe are unreliable, poorly
programmed and prone to tampering.

An investigation published in today's Independent reveals tens of
thousands of touch screen voting machinesmay be less reliable than the
old punchcards, which famously stalled the presidential election in
Florida in 2000, leaving the whole election open to international
ridicule.

The machines are said to offer no independent verification of individual
voting choices, making recounts impossible, and the software is shielded
from public scrutiny by trade secrecy agreements.

The shortcomings have appeared in two academic studies and have prompted
calls for urgent oversight legislation. They have also cast doubt on the
accuracy of last November's mid-term election results, especially in
Georgia, the first state to switch to touch screen voting.

David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University, said:
"These machines do not allow the voters to check that their votes are
accurately and permanently recorded. No one can prove that the machines
are trustworthy."

The three leading voting machine manufacturers are substantial
Republican campaign donors, and one of their chief executives, Walden
O'Dell of Diebold, in Ohio, wrote a letter to Republican supporters
saying he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to
the President next year". That raised serious concerns of bias. "The
rush towards computerisation is very dubious," Rebecca Mercuri, a
research fellow at Harvard University, said. "It takes away the checks
and balances of a democratic society."

In Georgia, citizens were alarmed at apparent anomalies in the election
results forgovernor and one of the state's two Senate seats. Both
offices were won by Republicans in last-minute voting swings away from
Democrats.

Causes for alarm included a serious malfunction in the voting software,
discovered after the machines were packaged for shipment, which had to
be repaired with a programming "patch", and the fact that the patch
showed up on an open-access internet page. Hundreds of security flaws
were identified in subsequent follow-up studies. There were also several
election day glitches, including the loss of 67 voting memory cards in
the Democrat stronghold of central Atlanta.