Feds: Paperless Voting Machines Insecure

(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.

[feelfree1]

Re: "Feds: Paperless Voting Machines Insecure"

CBS could start a whole new section with this story, dubbed the "No ***, Sherlock!?" section.

[feelfree1]

Hermit22,

Re: "how can we be sure the democrates really got voted in by humans to the DC mini majority?"

We can't. That's why this is not a partisan issue.

[hermit22]

how can we be sure the democrates really got voted in by humans to the DC mini majority?

[antoniof123]

DUH

[pakaal]

Oregon's vote by mail has given them the top five spot in voter turnout for the past several elections. It has a paper trail, is as tamper-proof as any methods we have now, is as easy as putting your vote in the mailbox, gives you time to consider your choices at home at your leisure rather than while standing in a booth, and is much more cost-effective.

http://www.votebymailproject.org/

[agnim]

Leave it to our secretive and deceptive government to keep us in the dark; and then tell us something after we already found another path to the important information we should have had before an election can be stolen; and Americans get saddled yet again with a certified idiot as our dear leader! LOL

[feelfree1]

Correction, I meant "2004", not "2006".

[feelfree1]

frankly6,

Re: "Democrats have been raising this issue for years"

Not many of them. In 2006 the Democrats were busy marketing their pro-war candidate, John Kerry- a man who personally voted in favor of implementing these machines.

Instead of pressing the obvious vote-fraud issues, Democrat Party strategists spent their energies smearing the only qualified man in the race- Ralph Nader.

Have you seen this Flash presentation of the 2000 Florida election fraud?

www.ericblumrich/gta.html

Instead of demonstrating some leadership and integrity on this issue, the Democrats squandered their resources in an effort to blame Nader for this shameful Democrat Party failure as well.

[frankly6]

Democrats have been raising this issue for years and have been flatly ignored by the no oversight GOP congress. They were more concerned with preserving their majority than having an honest representative vote.

[frankly6]

This is just one more real issue that the "do nothing" GOP congress was ignoring despite repeated calls for oversight on the local, state and national levels. My guess is that the ease of manipulating these systems was used to benefit them and so they saw no need.