Voting, Three Months Later

When we published a report on voting back in October, our conclusion included the line:

"Just as important, we must not forget about election systems until October 2012."

So, what has happened since November? Everyone’s favorite whipping boy, the-company-formerly-known-as-Diebold (Premier Election Solutions), has been in the news. The State of Maryland is suing the company for $8.5 million spent fixing security problems with touch-screen machines they purchased in 2001 leading up to the 2008 election. Meanwhile, controversy is brewing in California over tabulation software that not only is known to randomly delete ballots, does not log such actions. However, I’m going to be an optimist for a moment and explain how these articles actually point to some positive steps: - Maryland admits there are problems and has worked toward fixing them based on independent expert advice. One of the overwhelming problems we found when we looked into the electronic voting security is the disturbing tendency for election officials to trust the voting manufacturers over security experts. I’m fully aware that this change of heart in Maryland is the result of bad publicity and lawsuits directed toward the state, but it’s progress. - Maryland is applying economic pressure. This is the only way we will see these companies produce better products, making it expensive and impractical to do otherwise. In California: - This problem was found because Humboldt County in California has implemented a public auditing program. All of the ballots included in the tally are scanned and posted online to allow anyone to do their own count. During this process, it was discovered the official count different from the number of scanned ballots. This sounds like a pretty good rebuttal to those who keep insisting there is no need for a physical verification mechanism. It also sounds like a great program, I’d love to see this done more widely. Of course, these articles also point to underlying screw-ups, but I’m going to focus on the possibility that these steps will lead to more steps and we’ll be in a different place in October 2012.