Super Tuesday: Groups say states face e-voting risks
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Six U.S. states participating in Super Tuesday primary elections are at high risk for voting-machine malfunction or tampering because they don&#39;t have paper backups, according to a report released by the Verified Voting Foundation and Common Cause.
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Many states are facing legal challenges over possible voting problems Nov. 2. A look at some of the developments Tuesday and Wednesday:
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Experts say that when it comes to voting machines, usability issues should be as much of a concern as security.
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BOSTON - Tens of millions of people will cast their votes Nov. 2 in one of the most hotly contested presidential elections in recent U.S. history. But voters across the U.S. will encounter different voting technologies and procedures, with many counties nationwide clinging to punchcard, lever machine and even paper ballots, and the transition to electronic voting moving slowly in many states.
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As many as 90 percent of the electronic voting machines in one coastal South Carolina county did not work when polls opened in Saturday's Republican primary and officials also worried that snow forecast for the northern part of the state could impact voter turnout.
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After nearly 50,000 Michigan Democrats cast ballots over the Internet in February, academics eagerly sought election data that would help them determine what types of people voted online. But scholars around the country complain that they haven't been able to get statistics from the Feb. 7 caucus.
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Six states at 'high risk' In the Democratic and Republican primaries being held today, voters from 24 states will cast ballots for presidential candidates, making it the biggest "Super Tuesday" in US history.â¦
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On Super Tuesday, voters in Beijing will cast ballots for the U.S. Democratic Party presidential candidate of their choice.Members of Democrats Abroad in China will be eligible, along with fellow party members in other countries outside the U.S., to participate in the first-ever Democratic Global Presidential Primary, a party initiative to increase voting options for Democrats living overseas, including e-voting.&quot;Americans living abroad are a constituency of their own, and we should have a voice of our own. We have different issues, and different takes on issues. That at least one party has recognized that it is its own constituency is a step forward,&quot; said David Wolf, a native Californian who runs a technology consulting firm in the Chinese capital.&quot;The Democratic race is pretty darn exciting right now, so I guess everyone is just anxious to participate. We&#39;re also getting a lot of new members. A lot of people are signing up. And the online voting is new,&quot; said Claire Taylor, vice chair of Democrats Abroad in the Netherlands. Taylor estimated that the group&#39;s local membership increased 30 percent, thanks to the Global Presidential Primary.In the U.S., Feb. 5 will see primaries in 17 states, six caucuses and a state convention on what&#39;s known as &quot;Super Tuesday&quot; due to the large number of states participating and the number of delegates at stake. The Global Presidential Primary allows overseas voters to vote from Feb. 5 to Feb. 12.At stake are 14 delegates, who will join eight &quot;super-delegates&quot; chosen at Democrats Abroad regional caucuses later in the year, all of whom will then participate in the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August. That makes the overseas constituency similar in size to the number of Democratic delegates in Nevada, which has 25.Behind the electronic voting option is Everyone Counts in San Diego. Founded in Melbourne, Australia, it is &quot;a software company with a mission to make democracy more transparent,&quot; according to CEO Lori Steele. Its two largest elections to date were a 4 million voter mock election in the U.S., and a local authority election in the U.K. with 160,000 voters. Steele expects &quot;tens of thousands&quot; to participate in Tuesday&#39;s Global Presidential Primary.In order to facilitate outside auditing and transparency, Everyone Counts&#39; software is open source. The main components of the software are security, to guarantee encryption during the voting process; verification, to ensure that only the authorized voter is casting the ballot and then is not permitted to vote again using another method, and also to verify the total votes cast and the results; and accounting, to allow counting, auditing and certification of results by the appropriate election board. For the Global Presidential Primary, voting will be supported on about 20 different browsers, Steele said.&quot;When voters register with Democrats Abroad, they provide various personal details that would be used to help authenticate them.&#160;On Super Tuesday, just before polls open, Everyone Counts will issue each voter registered with Democrats Abroad with a ballot number and PIN.&#160;The voter is required to provide this ballot number and PIN, combined with select personal data that they used to register, to access their ballot in the live election.&#160;The system will only allow a ballot number to be used once, so if a voter has voted but tries to access a ballot again, the system locks them out,&quot; Steele said.To participate, Democrats living outside the U.S. must first become members of Democrats Abroad, then register to vote in the Global Presidential Primary. Including a final verification step, the whole process took him a little more than 15 minutes, Wolf said. Along with e-voting, registered Democrats overseas can vote by fax, post or in person at voting centers in over 30 countries.Members of Republicans Abroad are not being offered the same opportunity by their party, although overseas Republicans may still vote in state primaries by conventional means. Democrats who live abroad may also continue to vote absentee by conventional means through their home districts. Voting in the Global Presidential Primary does not change a voter&#39;s registration status for the general presidential election in November.In previous presidential election years, overseas American voters could participate in caucuses held in foreign countries, but those were limited and usually held only in major cities, making it difficult for those based elsewhere to take part. Also, because absentee balloting procedures vary not only by state but in many cases by county, voting by mail in primaries was often seen as more trouble than it was worth. Applicants must usually declare 60 to 90 days prior to the election that they will be unable to vote at a polling place, and then must return their absentee ballot no later than the election day -- not always easy in countries where postal systems are slow or unreliable.While she lauded recent U.S. efforts, including the Global Presidential Primary, to make e-voting more readily available, Steele said it lags behind other nations. &quot;The U.S. has really dragged its feet on accessible i-voting for overseas voters. Other countries like Estonia run an entirely online election for their voters,&quot; she said, for a registered base of about 1 million voters. Some states are already considering using e-voting systems like Everyone Counts&#39; for the general election in November. &quot;Using open source and having transparency in elections is what is going to propel this forward more quickly,&quot; she said.For Wolf, who has lived in China for over a decade, being able to vote electronically changed his perspective on the election. &quot;It has made it much more relevant. It gave me a deadline to make a decision, and for the first time in 12 years I feel re-engaged in the process.&quot;(Grant Gross in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.)
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(InfoWorld) - With hotly contested nationwide elections just weeks away, several computer experts Thursday questioned the reliability and security of e-voting systems during a congressional committee hearing. Access doors of thousands of Diebold AcuVote-TS touch-screen systems can all be opened with the same key -- a type commonly used for office furniture, jukeboxes and hotel minibars, Princeton University computer science professor Edward Felten told the committee. That door protects the removable memory card that stores votes. "Though some claim that election procedures will prevent the kinds of problems we identified, the rigid procedures described in vendor manuals are often ignored in practice," said Felten, co-author of a study that was highly critical of Diebold Election Systems' AccuVote TS. Also today, the Committee on House Administration took no action on legislation proposed by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) aimed at remedying e-voting vulnerabilities. The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR 550), introduced last February, now has more than 200 bipartisan co-sponsors. Among its various provisions, HR 550 would mandate that each machine produce a paper receipt that could be used in a recount. The bill also calls for e-voting vendors to offer greater transparency to their software. By not sending the bill to the floor for a vote, the committee missed any chance of ensuring that November's elections would produce auditable results, Holt said. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 was aimed at preventing the sort of notorious failures such as occurred in Florida in 2000 due to disputes over manually operated punch-card systems. Some $3 billion was earmarked under HAVA to fund state compliance, with most of that money going to purchase e-voting gear, said committee chairman Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) in his opening remarks for the hearing. "Though HAVA did not require the adoption of any particular kind of technology, many jurisdictions purchased electronic voting systems because they felt these systems were best able to meet the requirements of HAVA," said Ehlers. "Not surprisingly, some jurisdictions using this new equipment for the first time have encountered some difficulties," he said. Ehlers cited recent problems with e-voting gear in Montgomery County, Md. Earlier this week, Ehlers submitted an amendment to HAVA to reimburse any voting jurisdictions that print out paper ballots for voters who prefer not to cast their votes on touch-screen voting gear this November. Similar legislation was filed by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in the Senate. The bill calls for up to 75 cents to be spent per paper ballot. Ehlers estimated that it would probably cost no more than $10 million, based on the estimate of the number of voters in precincts using touch-screen gear that don't offer a paper trail. He told Computerworld he offered the amendment because he didn't expect HR 550 to be passed this year. "We thought in light of the problems we've seen, most recently in Maryland, that collectively, these problems were shaking voters' confidence," he said. "We thought if jurisdictions want to give voters another choice, we should support them in that." Ehlers declined to predict when or if the emergency amendment would pass. Like all House members, Ehlers is up for re-election this year, and his district uses e-voting gear. "Certainly, any voting system that is not verifiable and auditable is of concern," he said.
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Long lines, a shortage of poll workers and unprecedented numbers of mail-in ballots could delay vote counts in the biggest-ever Super Tuesday in American politics Â a day in which nearly half the nation will cast ballots.
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Many states are facing legal challenges over possible voting problems Nov. 2. A look at some of the developments Friday:
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Cheryl Roberts was impressed with Florida's new voting machines in the 2002 primary, when she cast an electronic ballot for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride. But a series of computer glitches - including startling cases of corrupted or missing data - has undermined her faith...
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ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND - Poll observers in about 6 percent of Maryland's precincts recorded 201 problems with electronic voting machines during the Nov. 2 general election, according to a report released Tuesday by TrueVoteMD.org.
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A report by Princeton University researchers questions the security measures used in Diebold Election Systems' touch-screen voting systems. But the company disputed the concerns, saying its e-voting hardware is safe from tampering.
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As the November presidential election nears, several groups are mobilizing to monitor the voting process -- including a group of observers from across the globe and over a thousand techies who will help evaluate voting machines. By Laila Weir.
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Although they're glad the state of Ohio is looking for ways to improve and secure its e-voting systems, e-voting advocates said today that moving too fast to implement changes could make things worse.
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Many states are facing legal challenges over possible voting problems Nov. 2. A look at some of the developments Sunday: