Security Fears Put Electronic Voting Under the Microscope

Fears concerning computer security are resulting in setbacks for the movement toward electronic voting. Most recently, the Pentagon has scuppered plans to allow Americans living abroad to cast ballots on the Internet. At the same time, some county and state elections officials, bowing to worries about computer viruses and the potential for electronic tampering, are adding printers to new, ATM-like voting machines so citizens can check that their votes have been cast accurately. The Department of Defense announced yesterday it is canceling a program that would have allowed up to 100,000 U.S. citizens living abroad, mostly military personnel and their relatives, to vote via the Internet in elections this year. The action came after a report released by computer-security analysts last month said the program was inherently vulnerable to hacker attacks that could change or cancel votes. The report recommended the project be scrapped. The program, called the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE), had been developed at a cost of $22 million under a contract with consulting giant Accenture. Seven states had signed up to use the program this year. Had it gone forward and proved successful, it might have been expanded to serve all 6 million U.S. expatriates. Defense Department officials, who at first dismissed the report, are now saying they intend to continue seeking ways to allow overseas citizens to vote electronically. At the same time, several state and county governments are acting on the urgings of some computer-security experts that touch-screen voting machines be equipped with printers that can generate a paper record of voters' choices. Elections officials are increasingly adopting the machines in the wake of the highly publicized voting irregularities in the 2000 presidential election and subsequent federal legislation aimed at improving voting accuracy. Diebold Inc., best known for its ATMs, is the leading supplier of the new voting technology, with some 33,000 machines installed around the country. Palm Beach County commissioners this week voted to approve a resolution that the county equip its 5,400 machines with printers, at an estimated cost of more than $3 million, or about $600 each. The machines themselves typically cost more than $3,000 apiece. Palm Beach County elections officials, however, doubt the printers will be available and certified in time for the presidential elections this November. Elsewhere, Nevada will be among the first states to have printers running on its machines in time for the national elections. And a bill backed by Congressman Rush Holt (D-N.J.) proposes a paper audit trail and would require, among other things, that one-half of 1% of all votes cast on voting machines always be audited.