Touch-Screen Voting Machines Not Counted On
Security experts say optical scan best way to ensure election accuracy
February 13, 2008 —
(Page 1 of 3)
In Avi Rubin’s eyes, the best way to improve direct-recording electronic voting machines, or DREs, is to stop using them altogether.
Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University and longtime critic of electronic voting methods of all stripes, said that U.S. states are moving away from the questionable DRE machines, also known as touch-screens, to optical scanning, and he couldn’t be happier.
The issue has come to the fore again during this primary voting season in the United States, as Americans in both the Democratic and Republican parties choose their candidate for the November presidential elections.
Using optical scan machines, voters fill in an oval beside the name of a candidate, and the optical scan could reject an invalid ballot. Because it uses a paper ballot for scanning, this method offers the ability to audit ballots and perform recounts, while DREs keep vote totals on computer file and lack ballots.
“You just have to trust that everything is working correctly inside the machine,” Rubin said. “I think optical scan has its own challenges, but it does provide a mechanism to audit the election, which I don’t think should ever be compromised. The optical scanners are computers just like the touch-screens, but they have much less code in them, and less code means fewer bugs, and it’s easier to audit.”
Rubin knows all too well about the vulnerabilities of electronic machines. In 2004, he manually reviewed leaked source code from Diebold electronic voting equipment and discovered problems. Since then, he has been urging states to move away from DREs.
Questions Surround DREs
The most common vulnerability found in the machines’ software is memory buffer overflows, according to Rob Rachwald, product marketing director at Fortify Software, which sells testing software for security.’s director of product marketing. By using the overflow condition to bypass normal operation, hackers could potentially adjust the vote count or eliminate votes by bringing down a system.
Another issue uncovered by Fortify’s SCA scanner was vulnerabilities in password storage for the administrators who access the machines.
Share this link: http://sdt.bz/31718
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Zeichick’s Take: Radio moves from analog waveforms to digital packets
Streaming radio highlights the need for streaming applications to be designed to take up as little bandwidth as possible
|
|
Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans
|
|
Appcelerator Acquires Cocoafish to Add Instant Mobile Cloud Capabilities to its Industry Leading Titanium Platform
Appcelerator Offers Messaging, Social, Location and Storage Mobile Cloud Services to All Mobile App Publishers
|
|
ComponentOne Releases a Collection of 40+ UI Widgets Powered by HTML5 and jQuery
ComponentOne has announced the 2012 release of Wijmo: a kit of UI widgets for HTML5 and jQuery development
|
Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans
|
|
Top five apps to manage your workload
Web applications offer new ways to track your “to-do” lists
|
|
Not so fast when it comes to testing in the cloud
Developers face outsourcing, virtual lab management and mobile devices as obstacles
|
|
Xceed releases UX-focused suite for Microsoft’s WPF
"Blendables" helps match user experiences to developer visions
|
Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.
|
|
Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.
|
|
RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!
|
|
GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.
|
The Hidden Costs of Software Licensing
Moving beyond paper-based software licensing to more flexible, software-based licensing is a business decision. There is a growing trend tow...
|
|
Case Study: You May Need a Development Mechanic
As a contractor for a major financial player in Germany, SOBEGE, a German-based consultancy specializing in embedded IT and web services, wa...
|
|
Ensuring Software Quality at a Major International Bank
One of the world’s leading international banks has adopted AgitarOne technology for delivering generated unit tests for their Java software...
|
|
Load Testing Adobe Flex Applications
Adobe Flex applications may be different from applications you’ve worked with before. For classic HTML web applications, the server does all...
|