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Paperless electronic voting: A Solution That Creates More Problems Than It Solves

In the wake of the 2000 Election debacle, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), authorizing $3.8 billion in federal spending for election reform on the state level, much of which was earmarked to help states replace outdated voting equipment.[1]  

Given an unprecedented sales opportunity, voting machine manufacturers touted their latest versions of Direct Recording Electronic voting machines (DRE) as the solution to every election official’s problems. [2]  Few election officials had the technological or financial resources to independently evaluate these sales claims. Officials in many states were erroneously convinced that they had to replace all of their voting equipment with paperless DREs. [3] Many have been persuaded that DREs will eliminate the persistent problems of overvotes, undervotes and phantom votes (more votes recorded than voters), that they will dramatically reduce storage costs, make recounts quick and easy, and that what problems remain can be overcome via policies, procedures and guidelines, which they can implement at the local level This has proven to be inaccurate.

Insecure and Error-Prone Technology Puts U.S. Elections at Risk

Electronic equipment miscounts votes, breaks down during elections, malfunctions as it tallies votes, disenfranchises voters, and is highly vulnerable to both outside hacking and large scale manipulation by any of the thousands of insiders with access to the central tabulating software. Invisible ballot counting, tabulation, and aggregation; undisclosed, proprietary source code; hidden bugs; uncertified bug fixes; secret audit trail failures; and the impossibility of conducting meaningful recounts compound these deficiencies.[4]

The New York Times points out: “The big voting machine companies, which are well connected politically, are aggressively pushing touch-screen voting. These A.T.M.-style machines make a lot of sense for the manufacturers because they are expensive and need to be replaced frequently. But touch-screen machines are highly vulnerable to being hacked or maliciously programmed to change votes. And they cost far more than voting machines should.


The Washington Post editorialized: “If for some reason -- and it could be tampering -- certain votes don't get counted, who will ever know? The machine's totals might be retabulated, but the results might not differ from the first totals. So why not require voter-verified paper records? The technology exists...”[6]


Computer scientists and security experts have found critical vulnerabilities throughout the electronic voting and vote-counting process, from the individual DREs themselves, straight through to the central tabulating software of the major voting machine manufacturers. [7]   Reports attesting to these deficiencies have been issued by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress (CRS)[8] Johns-Hopkins and Rice Universities[9], Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)[10], Compuware (examining the technologies used by the four largest manufacturers for the State of Ohio)[11] and the California Touch Screen Task Force[12] (which also examined multiple brands) among many others. 

  • Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, labeled the security of DRE voting systems “extremely inadequate.”[13]  
  • The Johns Hopkins study found that DRE machine security safeguards are "far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts." 
  •  Consultants testing systems security for the state of Maryland (RABA Technologies) reported that they were able to repeatedly enter the state’s Diebold system by remote access, change test election “results,” view partial election results, cause elections to terminate early, and exit the system “without leaving any trace of their presence.” [14] 
  •  At least one manufacturer’s system allows for easy and untraceable manipulation by insiders and outsiders alike, from candidates, political insiders, and common hackers, to terrorist groups and foreign governments.[15]
Not one independent study by qualified experts disputes these consistent findings.

Unregulated Testing, Secret Certification, Private Software

The vote counting industry is basically self-regulating. There are not now, nor have there ever been, any mandatory federal standards or certification process for voting systems.[16]  The method of testing is treated as a vendor trade secret, as is the proprietary software itself.  No one, including the election officials who purchase these machines, has access to this information.  However, researchers have found that in at least two cases (Diebold and Sequoia machines) software has been certified with multiple “back doors” in their central tabulating system, leaving the votes for entire counties wide open to hacking by both insiders and outsiders.[17]  Hardware defects also occur with alarming frequency.  Lax testing standards fail to catch many of these system flaws.[18]

Serious Malfunctions of Paperless Voting Machines Across the U.S.A.

Almost 30% of voters nationwide voted on paperless touch-screen voting machines in the 2004 Presidential Election,[19] up from just 13% in 2000[20].  Significant numbers of DREs are deployed in twenty-four states, and nearly every one has reported serious DRE malfunctions since 2000.[21] 


 
In the 2004 Presidential Election, voters' selections changed in front of their eyes on the touch screens of paperless voting machines. Electronic poll books failed to work properly. Tabulation equipment began subtracting votes after accumulated totals reached 32,000.Voting machines lost votes, miscounted votes, and mysteriously added votes.  Machines broke down, froze up, paged through ballots backwards, and skipped past important races.[22]  See endnotes for examples of how election malfunctions have:
- forced states to hold new elections [23]
- added votes not cast by voters [24]
- subtracted votes cast by voters [25]
- changed voters’ choices on the screen[26]
- given voters the wrong ballot[27]
- passed testing and failed on Election Day [28]
- handed votes to the wrong candidate[29]
- reversed election outcomes [30]
- broken down during elections [31]
- recorded votes incorrectly [32]

An Achievable Improvement: Voter Verified Paper Records with Mandatory Random Manual Audits

Traditional ballots can be randomly audited by hand as a safeguard against errors or breakdowns in the vote recording and tabulation process, and they can be manually recounted in the case of a close race; electronic “ballots” cannot.  Recounts of votes cast on paperless DREs can only replicate the original results; they neither detect nor correct machine-related errors.   To protect the integrity of our elections, 95% of computer professionals and security experts[33] agree that:

 
All voting machines purchased with HAVA funds must provide or produce a Voter-Verified Paper Ballot (VVPB) that:
  1. Presents each voter with the opportunity to check the accuracy of a paper record of his/her vote before it is officially cast. 

  2. The VVPB must be directly readable to permit manual audits and recounts without an electronic interface.
  3. Mandatory random audits of the voter paper records are required to ensure the accuracy of the machine count.
  4. The VVPB must legally be treated as the ballot of record whenever there is a discrepancy between the machine count and a hand count of the individual voter-verified paper records.

Equipment Is Readily Available

Voting equipment that meets these minimal requirements is readily available.  The familiar optically scanned paper ballot is inherently voter-verified and HAVA-compliant.  In addition, grassroots and media pressure have forced DRE manufacturers to develop add-on printing devices, which provide the voter with the opportunity to verify a paper record of their vote., which can be manually audited and recounted.


On June 10, 2005, the New York Times editorialized in favor of House passage of the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005 (H.R. 550[34]) which would amend HAVA to require voter-verified paper records and mandatory manual audits in all federal elections:


“Electronic voting has been rolled out nationwide without necessary safeguards. The machines' computers can be programmed to steal votes from one candidate and give them to another. There are also many ways hackers can break in to tamper with the count. Polls show that many Americans do not trust electronic voting in its current form; such doubts are a serious problem in a democracy.'"[35]


On June 23, 2005, the Democratic National Committee issued a major report on the 2004 election in Ohio titled Democracy at Risk.  The section devoted to electronic voting highlighted the same set of risks and recommended the same specific solutions[36] as those identified in this proposal.

A Grassroots Struggle to Hold Back the Tide: Time is Running Out

Time is running out for states and counties to contract for the new voting machines the HAVA funding windfall enables them to buy; the Congressionally-imposed deadline is January 1, 2006.  Despite the overwhelming weight of technical and operational evidence, many of the states and counties now lining up to order new, HAVA-funded voting systems are still planning to purchase paperless DREs, or have already purchased them. 

Over Seventy State and Local E-Voting Reform Groups Have Been Organized

State and local electronic voting reform groups began calling for national cohesion and cooperation early in 2004, when groups had formed in roughly 20 states.   There are now more than 70 such groups.

Activists in almost every state have been pushing back. Over the past two years, more than seventy volunteer grassroots groups have organized across the country at the state and county level[37] to bring the emerging concerns about electronic voting and vote counting to the attention of federal, state and county officials
Despite virtually a complete lack of funding, coordination and organizational support, many of these nonpartisan state and local e-voting reform groups have tirelessly lobbied their state legislators, developed allies – often on both sides of the aisle, drafted much of the legislation, and obtained the attention of the public and the media. Their hard work on the ground prevented many states and counties from ordering unauditable, unreliable and insecure electronic voting and vote counting systems before the November elections. 

Legislative Progress

A great deal of progress has been made as a result of the grassroots activities of these state and local election integrity groups.  Twenty-six states have thus far enacted legislation and four others have regulations requiring voter-verified paper records, thanks largely to the hard work of these self-organized and often isolated groups of dedicated volunteers . A handful of these states now require a random manual audit of a specified percentage of votes cast.  VVPB legislation has been introduced but not yet been enacted in fourteen other states and the District of Columbia. [38]  Several federal bills with VVPB language have been introduced in the U.S. House and Senate in 2003, 2004 and 2005, but have been bottled up in committee.
 

VotetrustUSA: Building a National Alliance of Election Integrity Organizations

To increase their organizational reach and effectiveness and provide a strong national voice for the e-voting reform movement, state and local election integrity organizations across the country have joined together in national coalition, under the banner of VoteTrustUSA.  By working in coalition, they will be better equipped to protect the integrity of America’s elections in Congress, state legislatures, and county elections offices, through the media, and in the courts by

  • Working for passage of VVPB legislation in the remaining 24 states.
  • Educating the public, election officials and legislators on the need for random manual audits.
  • Lobbying state legislatures for the introduction and passage of random manual audits.
  • Lobbying the U.S.  House and Senate for passage of federal legislation mandating voter verified paper records and random manual audits.
  • Developing relationships and working with the Election Assistance Commission and other commissions dealing with election reform issues

[2] http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0308/S00175.htm   “The Election Systems Task Force’s “goal was very limited. They just wanted to get the legislation enacted HAVA and to create more business opportunities for them as integrators. Their agenda was ‘how do we get congress to fund a move to electronic voting?’ ”

[3] ibid. pp. 2-3

[4] Theisen, op.cit.

[5] “Virtues of Optical Scan Voting,” New York Times, March 9, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/opinion/09wed3.html?ex=1113451200&en=6b5c608162d8a054&ei=5070

[6]  “At Risk Voters,” Washington Post, June 18, 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50914-2004Jun17.html

[7] Shelley, Michael, Chiou, Liliana, E-Voting Machines, March 9, 2005, http://csifdocs.cs.ucdavis.edu/tiki-download_wiki_attachment.php?attId=184

[viii] Eric A. Fischer, Senior Specialist in Science and Technology, Domestic Social Policy Division,  CRS Report for Congress, Election Reform and Electronic Voting Systems (DREs): Analysis of Security Issues, Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress, November 4, 2003. page 7

[9] Aviel D. Rubin , Tadayoshi Kohno, Adam Stubblefield, Aviel D. Rubin, Information Security Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Dan S. Wallach, Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Analysis of an Electronic Voting System, July 23, 2003, http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf. 

[10] Science Applications Technologies Corporation (SAIC) Risk Assessment Report: Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting System and Processes, September 2, 2003,
[11] Compuware Corporation, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) Technical Security Assessment Report,  November 21, 2003, http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/hava/files/compuware.pdf
 
[12] California Secretary of State, Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force Report, http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/taskforce_report.htm

[14]  RABA Innovative Solution Cell (RiSC), Dr. Michael A. Wertheimer, Director, Trusted Agent Report, Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting System, January 20, 2004, ,http://www.raba.com/press/TA_Report_AccuVote.pdf
 
[15] NY Times, July 24, 2003, “Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say,” http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/technology/24VOTE.html

[16] Associated Press, E-vote Standards Overwhelm Feds, Wired News, May. 03, 2004  http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63322,00.html

[18] Electronic Privacy Information Center, Voting, http://www.epic.org/privacy/voting/

[19] Hardy, Michael, Touch Screen Voting, Federal Computer Week, Sept. 6, 2004, http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0906/pol-vote-09-06-04.asp

[20]  Miller, Stephen, November Surprise: Electronic Voting Machines Add Uncertainty to Close Election Race, Corpwatch, September 8th, 2004, http://www.corpwatch.org/print_article.php?&id=11518

[21] Theisen, Ellen, Facts About Electronic Voting, Voters Unite! 2005, p. 2 http://www.votersunite.org/info/ElectronicVotingInBrief.pdf

[22] ibid.

[23] ibid, p. 4.  New Elections Needed after Electronic Voting Failures
Carteret County, North Carolina. November, 2004. Unilect Patriot DRE:
Unilect claimed their paperless voting machines would store 10,500 votes, but they only store 3,005  . After the first 3,005 voters, the machines accepted -- but did not store -- the ballots of 4,438 people in the 2004 Presidential election, Unilect’s president admitted there was no way to retrieve the missing data. Since the agriculture commissioner's race was decided by a 2,287-vote margin, there was no way to determine the winner. The State Board of Elections ordered a new election, estimated to cost $3 million, but after 3 months of legal challenges, the candidate with fewer votes conceded.
Hinds County, Mississippi. November 4, 2003. AVS WINVote DRE: Voting machine malfunctions were so widespread, the Senate called for a new election. Voting computers at some polling places failed to start up. Others overheated and broke down during the election, and not enough paper ballots were available to allow all voters to vote. The Mississippi Senate decided it was impossible to determine the will of the voters. So it declared the election invalid, and a new election was held on February 10, 2004. 

[24] ibid, p. 5. “Phantom” Votes Added by Electronic Voting Machines. 
In the first two months after the 2004 General Election, phantom votes (more votes than voters) were reported in Florida, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Washington. Reports of additional phantom votes continue to appear.
Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. November, 2004. Microvote DRE:
Results show nearly 3,000 more votes than voters. According to election-office data downloaded by the Charlotte Observer, 102,109 people voted early or returned valid absentee ballots. But unofficial results show 106,064 people casting early and absentee votes for president  On investigation, officials found that the machine or the accumulation software simply tallied wrong.
Bernalillo County, New Mexico. November, 2004. Sequoia AVC Edge DRE, Danaher Guardian DRE:
New Mexico certified election results reported 2,087 phantom votes (more votes than ballots cast) for president statewide, concentrated in Bernalillo County. The official canvass report shows 187 precincts in Bernalillo County reporting a total of 1,239 presidential phantom votes.

[25] ibid, p. 7, Software Counts to 32,767 and then Counts Backwards,
Broward County, Florida. November 2004. ES&S Unity Tally Software:
ES&S vote-tallying software loses 70,000 votes for Amendment 4. The bug, discovered two years ago but never fixed, began subtracting votes after the absentee tally hit 32,500 -- a ceiling put in place by the software makers.
Orange County, Florida. November, 2004. ES&S Unity Tally Software:
ES&S vote-tallying software omits counting 8,400 votes. The precinct results posted on the Orange County elections office Web site showed that Senator Kerry beat President Bush by 9,227 votes in Orange County, but the posted results
were off by 8,400 votes. The margin was actually only 827 votes.  The cause of the error, county officials said, was a software program that could not tabulate more than 32,767 votes in a single precinct. A similar discrepancy
affected vote totals posted online for the U.S. Senate race.
Guilford County, North Carolina. November, 2004. Unity Tally Software
ES&S vote-tallying software changes two outcomes in Guilford County. In Guilford County, ES&S early voting machines also had capacity problems. Retallying changed two outcomes and gave an additional 22,000 votes to Kerry.
Ken Carbullido, Vice President of ES&S Product Development, admitted the company knew about the problem but had not advised the county.

[26] ibid, p. 8, Votes Jump to the Opponent on the Screen
Bernalillo County, New Mexico. October, 2004. Sequoia DRE
Votes for Kerry jump to Bush. iI took some voters as many as three times to get the machine to register their votes for Kerry instead of switching the selection to Bush.
Maryland. November, 2004. Diebold DRE:
On election day, TrueVoteMD registered 383 reports involving 531 incidents of problems encountered by voters. Among a myriad of other problems detailed in the report, many voters reported votes switching on the screens.
[27] ibid, p. 9, DREs Present Incorrect Ballots to Voters
Maryland. March 2004. Diebold DRE Systems: The U.S. Senate contest was omitted from ballots in three counties.
According to voter complaints collected by Senator Barbara Mikulski, who won in the primary, her race didn’t appear on ballots in at least three Maryland counties.
Orange County, California. March 2004. Hart Intercivic e-Slate System: Incorrect access codes gave voters incorrect ballots. Poll workers struggling with a new electronic voting system in last gave thousands of voters the wrong ballots. In 21 precincts where the problem was most acute, there were more
ballots cast than registered voters. At polling places where the problem was most apparent because of turnouts exceeding 100%, an estimated 1,500 voters cast the wrong ballots, Tallies at an additional 55 polling places with
turnouts more than double the county average of 37% suggest at least 5,500 voters had their ballots tabulated for the wrong precincts. 

[28] ibid, pp. 9-10, DREs Present “Phantom” Ballots to Voters
Honolulu, Hawaii. September 2004. Hart Intercivic DRE.:  New eSlate electronic voting machines allowed voters to choose a Green Party ballot, even though there were no Green Party candidates. The error disenfranchised 22 voters. State elections officials said the computerized voting machines provided by Hart Intercivic allowed voters to "click on" a political party, even though there weren't any candidates running from that party on their island.

[29]  ibid, p.12, Programming Errors Give Votes to the Wrong Candidate
A candidate for Rowlett mayor was added to the ballot four days before the start of early voting. The change in the ballot definition wasn't programmed into the ES&S electronic voting machines until after early voting began. When the results were combined with the results from ES&S optical scan machines, the programming error caused the tally software to improperly tally results in the mayor's race as well as 17 other races. Nearly 5,000 of the 18,000 ballots were improperly counted.
 
 
[30]   Franklin County. Indiana. November, 2004. Fidlar Optical Scan.  Straight-party Democratic votes were counted as Libertarian. County officials and Fidler technicians agree that an election programming error caused the miscount.One outcome was overturned when the program was corrected.
Carroll County, North Carolina. November, 2004. ES&S Optical Scan.  Vendor mis-programming caused a miscount in one contest. The chip supplied by ES&S for the election miscounted the votes for the JP District 2 race.
Taos County, New Mexico. November 2002. Sequoia Optical Scan. A ballot programming error caused the Optech optical scanner to assign votes to the wrong candidates.
Clay County, Kansas. August 2002 Optical Scan.  The final tally showed that one candidate for commissioner had had won, but a hand recount showed that his opponent had won by a landslide. In one ward, the
computer had mistakenly reversed the totals.
Bernalillo County, New Mexico. November 2000. Diebold Optical Scan.
A flawed ballot definition file for the presidential election caused 67,000 absentee and early-voting ballots to be counted incorrectly by the optical scan machine.   

[31] ibid, p. 13, DREs Breakdown Cause Long Lines During the Election
Broward County, Florida. October, 2004. ES&S DRE:  Break downs require voters to come back the next day.
Hundreds of voters showed up to vote early at Howard Forman Health Park, so many that a decision was made to keep the voting facility open until 11 p.m.Some people waited in line from early in the day until after the sun went down.
Unfortunately, for a group of about 50 people, the waiting did not pay off. A mechanical problem with the voting machines caused election workers to close down the polling place.
Across the United States Wait Times at Some Polling Places November 2004
Voters Turned Away After Waiting Hours. WPLG Local 10. Nov. 1, 2004. h ttp://www.local10.com/news/3878344/detail.html
(LA) Parish by parish list of voter machine problems called in by viewers. WWLTV.com. Nov. 2, 2004.
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl110204electionmishap.18e9b314.html
(MD) When the Right to Vote Goes Wrong. Page 7. TrueVoteMD. Nov. 2004. h http://www.truevotemd.org/Election_Report.pdf
(SC) Many Strand voters find long lines at precincts. Myrtle Beach Online. Nov. 3, 2004. By Jenny Burns.
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/special_packages/election2004/10085092.htm
(TX) Frustrated voters wait in long lines due to equipment failure. ABC13 Eyewitness News. Nov. 2, 2004.
By Mark Garay. http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/news/110204_local_votingprobs.html
(VA) New touch-screen voting machines present problems in Culpeper, Westmoreland. The Free-Lance
Star. Nov. 2, 2004. http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2004/112004/11022004/1102problemsforweb
 
[32] ibid, p. 14, VPB Demonstrates DRE Recording Error Sacramento, California. August, 2004. Sequoia Veri-Vote.
In a demonstration of its Direct Recording Electronic voting machine with a paper trail, Sequoia demonstrated that its machine failed to report four votes in Spanish.  Sequoia vice president and former California assistant secretary of state Alfie Charles was showing off the new Veri-Vote printer that his firm is supplying to Nevada when an astute legislative aide in Johnson's office noticed two votes were missing.  Charles tried again to vote in Spanish with the same result:He cast votes on two mock ballot initiatives, but they were absent from the electronic summary screen and the paper trail.  "The paper trail itself seemed to work fine but what it revealed was when he demonstrated voting in Spanish, the machine itself did not record his vote," Chesin said. "Programming errors can occur and the paper trail was the way we caught it."

[34] H.R. 550:Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.550:

[36] Democracy at Risk: The 2004 Election in Ohio, Section VII: Electronic Voting: Accuracy, Accessibility and Fraud and Section VIII: Transparent Aggregation of Voting Results Using the Internet,

[37] See table

[38] Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia.

 
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