E-voting demise could be near

Found on Contra Costa Times on Wednesday, 28 March 2007
Browse Politics

California's elections chief is proposing the toughest standards for voting systems in the country, so tough that they could banish ATM-like touch-screen voting machines from the state.

For the first time, California is demanding the right to try hacking every voting machine with "red teams" of computer experts and to study the software inside the machines, line-by-line, for security holes.

County elections officials balked at the proposed standards in a letter Monday to Bowen and hinted broadly at the same conclusion reached by several computer scientists: If enforced rigidly, the standards could send many voting machines, especially touch-screens, back for major upgrades.

Local elections officials argued that there isn't enough time to fix any deficiencies before the February 2008 presidential primary.

Untested and insecure systems have been used far too long; unofficial tests already proved how easy and quick votes can be changed, effectively changing the results of an election. Those amount of problems isn't unknown at all; otherwise the election officials wouldn't protest that the systems could not be fixed until the next election takes place.