[VoteRescue] Election panel: Odds of e-voting fraud low/write a letter!

[Jenny Clark]

ok folks
here's another letter to the editor opportunity...we trust the 
salesman of e-voting machines, but not the computer security 
expert?..huh?
FYI
write on!

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/09/30/0930voting.html

VOTING
Election panel: Odds of e-voting fraud low
But one dissenting member says voting machines make fraud more likely.
By Marty Toohey
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
With November's presidential election expected to draw 
record-breaking numbers of voters to the polls, are electronic voting 
machines safe from tampering by someone who wants to commit voting 
fraud?
A panel of local and national experts met Monday at the University of 
Texas to tackle that question. During the hour-plus discussion, the 
main disagreement among the six panelists was over how much mayhem 
someone could cause by hacking into a voting machine.
Most panelists said voters can be reasonably confident that 
electronic voting machines won't be tampered with. But Dan Wallach, a 
computer science professor at Rice University, said a study he helped 
the State of California conduct found that no voting machine is safe 
from tampering. He said that a single person could taint an entire 
county's votes by introducing a virus or otherwise tampering with a 
machine. And because the software in the machines is a trade secret, 
he said, election officials don't have the technical knowledge to 
check for tampering.
"With good old-fashioned paper ballots, you've got to tamper with as 
many pieces of paper" as the number of votes to be affected, Wallach 
said. But with electronic machines, he said, "everything is insecure."
That view was disputed by Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir and 
David Beirne, the spokesman for the main voting-machine trade group. 
Both said that Wallach's analysis was flawed and that rigorous 
testing has found the machines work effectively.
Beirne said Wallach's analysis is based on scenarios in which an 
election official abuses his or her special access, which Beirne said 
could happen regardless of whether paper or electronic ballots are 
used. He and DeBeauvoir said the machines have been tested 
extensively and that detection of fraud is just as likely as with 
paper ballots.
"We don't trust" that the machines work, DeBeauvoir said. "We test."
Electronic voting has become the national standard since the dispute 
in the 2000 presidential election concerning paper ballots in 
Florida. In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which 
required polling places to offer a place for people with disabilities 
to easily vote, one of several provisions that prompted most states 
to adopt electronic voting, according to panel members. Travis County 
uses only electronic balloting.
DeBeauvoir said the Travis turnout is expected to be 440,000, nearly 
85,000 more people than in 2004.
The panel, which was assembled by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of 
Public Affairs' Center for Politics and Governance, agreed that 
because of the high turnout, any problems at the polls will probably 
be magnified. The panel also agreed that it's too late to make any 
significant changes to election procedures before voters pick a new 
president Nov. 4.
mtoohey at statesman.com; 445-3673
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://voterescue.org/pipermail/voterescue_voterescue.org/attachments/20081002/4d0429e9/attachment.html