E-voting Security Under Fire in San Diego Lawsuit

[kster]

Sorry if this is a dupe.



August 07, 2006 (Computerworld)

A lawsuit has arisen over alleged breaches in security procedures around electronic voting machines in San Diego County following a hotly contested congressional election, casting doubt on the reliability of the machines themselves.

The suit, filed on July 31, requests that a special election on June 6 to fill the 50th Congressional District seat be invalidated. It also seeks a complete manual recount of the paper ballots, said Paul Lehto, an Everett, Wash.-based attorney handling the case. The suit was filed in Superior Court in San Diego and names Mikel Haas, county registrar of voters, and Brian Bilbray, the winner of the seat, as defendants. San Diego voters used AccuVote optical-scan and TSx touch-screen systems from Diebold Election Systems.

Whatever the specific merits of the suit, it could heighten some citizens' concerns for e-voting technology if critics' claims of the inherent security deficiencies get debated in court during the run-up to the fall elections.

One of the main points raised by the suit was the so-called sleepover policy, under which Haas directed that all the machines be released to poll-worker supervisors before the election. The "sleepovers" in the homes of the supervisors lasted from three days to more than a week


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