Paper Ballot Fraud Concern Greater Than DRE Paperless?

This statement needs addressed by the experts out there: "All you need for voter fraud with an optical scan is a number 2 pencil."

It's too true, and the truth not only hurts, it leads to a primary reason many continue to support the "paperless" DREs.

The saving grace is the built-in redundancy by using a "precinct" scanner with the paper ballot- noted primarily by David Dill and Dan Tokaji in several of their blog postings.

While the opti-scans have the theoretical potential to be manipulated, and stand-alone paper ballots can be manufactured in the hundreds, to do so in each and every "precinct" with a precinct opti-scan would be a hurdle. With central count scanners, the theoretical becomes more doable. I

That's one reason the two in combination - precinct scanner and a paper ballot - must be employed.

Absentee ballots have a long-standing history of being frauded. That system must be changed in Pennsylvania. The only way to go is with early voting a ballot which the voter has opportunity to "cast" at any number of secured places such as the courthouse, the central election bureau, or other public agency using a scanner in those locations.

The absentees would not be able to be tabulated until election night, when they would still be subject to potential legal challenge at the polling place.

(Net the Truth Online)

E-vote system doubts linger
BY DAVID SINGLETON, STAFF WRITER
02/17/2008
County’s new machines are barred in California
Lackawanna County’s decision to invest in Premier Election Solutions touch-screen voting machines for the April 22 primary and beyond stands as a rare vote of confidence in an increasingly embattled technology.


Lackawanna County’s decision to invest in Premier Election Solutions touch-screen voting machines for the April 22 primary and beyond stands as a rare vote of confidence in an increasingly embattled technology.

Many states that embraced electronic voting as a panacea to the ballot discrepancies that threw the 2000 presidential election into turmoil are suddenly sprinting in the opposite direction, citing potential accuracy and security concerns.

At the center of the stampede is Premier, formerly known as Diebold Election Systems, whose AccuVote-TSX machines — like those the county plans to purchase — have become a poster child for the real and imagined shortcomings of the industry...

...A permanent solution to the software vulnerability, along with enhancements to address issues raised in the California review, are part of a software upgrade now undergoing federal certification, Premier spokesman Chris Riggall said. The company hopes to have state certification for the upgrade later this year.

While no election system is “completely invulnerable” to tampering, Premier is constantly reviewing its products and doing everything it can to reduce vulnerabilities, Mr. Riggall said.

The main objection Premier and others in the industry have to studies like those conducted in California is they are carried out in laboratories with no resemblance to real-world circumstances, he said. Not only do researchers have weeks or months to devise threats, the scenarios generally assume no one involved in the election process can be trusted.

Mr. Riggall compared it to a simulated attack on a nuclear power plant where the alarms have been turned off and the security guards have been sent home in advance.

“When you take equipment and put it into a laboratory and say, ‘We’re going to give the pass-code. We are going to give you the manuals. We are going to give you everything,’ it is hard for me to fathom what kind of voting system is going to pass that test,” he said. “It’s just an extremely unrealistic examination.”

In Lehigh County, where the Premier machines have been in use since 2006, chief clerk Stacy Sterner said voters love the devices. The machines have been used in four elections without the slightest hint that any votes have been tampered with or lost, she said.

Although she is savvy enough to know it could happen, she said, tampering with the voting machines would require not only expertise but opportunity.

“The key word is opportunity,” Ms. Sterner said. “Somebody could not come in off the street and hack into a machine without someone noticing it.”

Mr. Riggall said there has never been a documented case of successful tampering with an electronic voting machine in the United States. The same can’t be said about paper ballots, he said.

Ms. Sterner said she might have predicted a few months ago that the movement toward optical-scan and paper-ballot election systems had too much inertia to be stopped. As she reads and hears more about the shortcomings of optical-scan systems, she’s not so sure.

“All you need for voter fraud with an optical scan is a number 2 pencil.”

http://www.thetimes-tribune.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19304351&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=415898&rfi=6