Reply #3: VT: Is Vermont's voting system secure ? [View All]

[freedomfries]

Is Vermont’s voting system secure?

Kathryn Casa
Vermont Guardian
Friday September 8, 2006
http://www.vermontguardian.com/local/092006/VTVoting.shtml

With none of the controversial touch-screen voting systems that have raised red flags in other states, and a safeguard mechanism in place, Vermonters can be assured of secure election results come November, according to Secretary of State Deb Markowitz.

Or can we?

A handful of local activists have their doubts, and last week a national voting watchdog pointed to what they say are serious problems with the Diebold optical scanner system used in Vermont.

Calais resident Jim Hogue, who helped propel the state’s ban on paperless electronic voting in 2003, said he thought at the time that the battle was over. “I thought ‘OK, we’ve won’ … and then I started discovering how vulnerable the optical scanners were.”
...
Because the system’s removable memory card contains an executable program which acts on the vote data, changing the program on the memory card can change the way the optical scan machine functions and the way the votes are reported, Hursti wrote.

“The system won’t work without this program on the memory card. Whereas we would expect to see vote data in a sealed, passive environment, this system places votes into an open active environment. With this architecture, every time an election is conducted it is necessary to reinstall part of the functionality into the optical scan system via memory card, making it possible to introduce program functions (either authorized or unauthorized), either wholesale or in a targeted manner, with no way to verify that the certified or even standard functionality is maintained from one voting machine to the next.”

http://www.vermontguardian.com/local/092006/VTVoting.shtml