Ohio Voting Machine Review Has Major Implications For Iowa: Critical Security Vulnerabilities, Threats to Voter Privacy
By Iowans for Voting Integrity

Iowa's discussion of purchasing new election equipment is likely to be affected by a landmark review of voting systems in Ohio. A report ordered by the Ohio Secretary of State and released December 14 found severe flaws in all of the voting systems Iowa uses.

“The Ohio review looked at every system Iowa uses, and found real risks to the integrity of elections,” said Iowans for Voting Integrity co-chair Sean Flaherty.  Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said that the security problems discovered were “worse than she anticipated.” [1]

Computer scientists who analyzed the software wrote that within a few weeks, they were able to subvert “every voting system they were provided in ways that would often lead to undetectable manipulation of election results.”  Computer scientists have previously found that malicious code can be written to escape pre-election and post-election testing, running only under desired conditions.[2] The Ohio reviewers warned that it is “safe to assume that motivated attackers will quickly identify – or already have – these and many other issues in the systems.”[3]

Equally troubling was a threat to voter privacy in the design of the TSx touch screen voting machine, made by Diebold/Premier and used in 71 Iowa counties.  Ohio reviewers confirmed reports that the TSx records votes in its computer memory with a time stamp, allowing anyone with access to the system and knowledge of the time of day that a vote was cast to violate voter privacy.[4] Iowa Code 52.7 requires that all voting systems used in the state permit voting “in absolute secrecy.”

 Ohio Secretary Brunner has recommended scrapping all touch screens and using only optically scanned paper ballots. Flaherty said, “Hopefully, these findings will seal the fate of touch screen systems in Iowa”. Legislation signed by Governor Culver in May requires counties eventually to scrap touch screens and adopt a system of optically scanned paper ballots, which are marked by the voter and later tabulated by a machine.  Funding is needed for counties to make switch as quickly as possible. Iowa's legislators,  Governor Culver, and Secretary of State Michael Mauro are discussing funding for new equipment this month.

Paper ballots are the beginning of the solution. Ballot  scanners also use software, so hand-count audits of a sample of ballots to check the electronic tally are necessary.  Audits are championed by many computer scientists who study voting systems, including a task force that included the former chief security officer of Microsoft and University of Iowa voting system expert Douglas Jones.[5] 16 states have laws requiring hand audits of election results.[6]

“The combination of optically scanned paper ballots and hand audits provides checks and balances that build confidence in the system,'' Flaherty said.

[1]    “Ohio Elections Official Calls Machines Flawed.” By Bob Driehaus. New York Times, December 15, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/
2007/12/15/us/15ohio.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

[2]    “The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World.”  Report of the Brennan Center for Justice Task Force on Voting System Security, pages 43-45.  http://brennancenter.org/
dynamic/subpages/download_file_39288.pdf

[3]    EVEREST Academic Review Team Findings, page 4 (page 22 of pdf), http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/info/EVEREST/
14-AcademicFinalEVERESTReport.pdf

[4]    IBID, page 154 (page 172 of pdf)

[5]    “The Machinery of Democracy,” page 3. http://brennancenter.org/dynamic/subpages/
download_file_39288.pdf

[6]    “Manual Audit Requirements.” The Verified Voting Foundation. March 2007, http://www.verifiedvoting.org/downloads/
stateaudits1007.pdf

For More Information Contact Sean Flaherty, Co-Chair
Iowans for Voting Integrity
319-621-8651
sean@iowansforvotingintegrity.org
www.IowansForVotingIntegrity.org