Much has been written about the importance of voter verified paper trails. They are not the "Gold Standard" of election security, as they are often called, but without them we cannot have any pretense of election security. The idea is that the voter will verify his selections on the paper printout before making the final entry. The printed record could then be used for any necessary recounts. This sounds reliable in theory but malevolent software could have the machine print the right candidate's name and record a different vote internally. The voting machine companies will not reveal the source code which operates the computer citing proprietary reasons, therefore it cannot be checked for security flaws. This is unconscionable.
An article in Newsweek by their high tech guru, Steven Levy, says a very serious security flaw has been discovered in the Diebold touchscreen voting machines which would allow anyone with basic computer programming skills to reprogram the machine with malicious software in a few minutes. It could be reprogrammed to manipulate the vote without a trace and technicians would think everything was fine. The irony is that the flaw was discovered by election watchdog Black Box Voting. Org. The state and federal election officials, with all their pretense of testing had not discovered this simple flaw. Computer-science professor Avi Rubin is quoted by Newsweek as saying,
"If Diebold had set out to build a system as insecure as they possibly could, this would be it."
The article in Newsweek.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
The New York Times said Diebold spokesman David Bear said the security flaw was intentionally built into the machines to allow election officials to easily update the machines in the future. He is quoted as saying, "For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software," he said, "I don't believe these evil elections people exist."
The New York Times article on the newly discovered Diebold touchscreen voting machine security flaw and the Diebold response.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
The machines which do have a VVPAT record the votes on a continuous roll of paper. This is definitely not designed for a convenient recount. Imagine counting the votes on a very long roll of toilet tissue. Therefore, it is likely that election officials will do every thing possible to keep from having a recount. As a practical matter enough votes could be changed by hacking that the election would not be close enough to trigger a recount. We found out in the 2004 Presidential election that exit polls do not mean anything to the mainstream press. They manage to rationalize the discrepancy.
When the exit polls in the Ukraine showed a significant discrepancy from the actual vote count the U.S. government officials encouraged a new election which reversed the results. When the same thing happened here our officials said it was just an aberation within the margin of error.
According to the Newsweek article 24 states do not have a paper trail, therefore there is no way for a recount. Congress has still not enacted this national standard for all voting machines. Could the fact that a Democratic Representative, Rush Holt from New Jersey introduced the bill, H.R.550, be the reason the Republican Congress has not passed the bill. Dare I say that it seems that the Republicans want voting machines that are subject to manipulation with no method for recounting? Preposterous? How would you explain it? That is mindboggling. Why else would any sensible person accept this condition?
H.R. 550 would go a long way to correct these problems. It would require some type of paper trail and very importantly require the voting machine companies to give their computer source codes to the election committee who could have them inspected for flaws. It also states that the paper trail will be the official vote in a recount. The bill was referred to the House committee on House Administration on 2/2/05 and has been languishing there ever since. The committee now has a new chairman, Representative Vernon Ehlers who seems to be a fairminded Republican so the chances for passage of the bill seem to be much improved. While this is not a perfect bill it may be the best we can obtain in the present environment.
I suggest a course of action on this matter.
Call all your congressmen to support this bill. Ask to talk to a congressional aide instead of having the receptionist relay the message. Many aides are willing to talk to you if you display a sense of urgency. Don't stop with your district representatives. Call every congressman that time allows. Surprisingly, the offices of all congressmen will talk to you. I have tried it. Many people think they can call only their congressmen. It would be wise to concentrate on the Republican representatives as the Democrats seem to already support the bill.
Write or call your newspaper and try to get them to cover this issue. It is very hard to get the mainstream press to cover these issues but many newspapers will print a polite, well-reasoned letter to the editor, even though it differs from their editorial philosophy. Most papers do like to appear fair and balanced whether they are or not. It is surprising how many people read letters to the editor.
Without a paper trail we have no election security. Without election security we have no democracy!