NEW
JERSEY Voting machines will
lack paper trail Judge
grants an extension on election technology
By Doug Eshleman Princetonian Staff
Writer
As required by Federal
law, all voters casting ballots in the presidential primary election
early next year will use a fully computerized voting system. But,
for New Jersey voters, there will be no physical record of the
votes, as the technology used to produce verified paper ballots are
not yet deemed reliable enough to be used in a real election,
according to an official test conducted by the New Jersey Institute
of Technology.
Citing these concerns,
a New Jersey Supreme Court judge ruled last week to grant an
extension to Sequoia Voting Systems, despite the fact that the
company has thus far failed to effectively retrofit the voting
machines it designed for the
state.
Sequoia reports to the state
attorney general, who in turn testifies before the New Jersey
Supreme Court every two months regarding the progress on the
modifications to the machines. Appel said that the attorney general
assured the court that no extension would be needed in order to
refit the machines. Last week, however, after the failure of the
newly redesigned systems, the judge granted the attorney general an
extension, making it impossible for the modifications of the voting
machines to be completed before the statewide primary
elections.
Sequoia Voting Systems has
been working to modify their machines since New Jersey passed
legislation in 2005 that set up plans to retrofit the machines to
record voting results on physical ballots in addition to keeping
electronic records.
The most
important addition to the newly updated Sequoia voting machines is a
printing system that provides a physical paper ballot receipt of
each voter's selection as a backup to protect against system
malfunctions and voter fraud.
Andrew Appel, a professor
in the computer science department who has studied Sequoia's
electronic voting machines explained, "After you make your
selections, a paper is printed out, you get to verify it and that
ballot gets dropped into a ballot box." This practice, he said,
creates a paper trail in case it is determined in a random sample
that the electronic results were
corrupted.
Ed Felten, director of the
Center of Information Technology Policy and a professor of computer
science and public affairs, warned that the current unreliability of
Sequoia's machines could present serious problems with voter
fraud.
"There could be a bug or
glitch of some kind," he said, "or someone could corrupt [the
systems]." Felten said he had done research on similar electronic
voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems, controversial for
their security issues. "We were able to make a program that could
steal votes in an election," he said of the Diebold
machines.
Appel pointed out that
there is another type of electronic voting machine technology called
optical scan technology that could be used by the state. With these
systems, voters fill in "bubbles" on a physical sheet that is read
by a computer, like a standardized test answer sheet. The sheet is
then saved as a physical record of the votes cast. "It's a simple,
robust, proven technology that many states use and it was available
many years ago," Appel said.
Appel
has testified before the Supreme Court, advising that the attorney
general should abandon Sequoia's currently unreliable systems in
favor of the optical scan machines.
Felten said although it
is difficult to predict the occurrence of voter fraud in advance of
an election, it is possible that a situation similar to the 2000
presidential election scandal in Florida could occur in New Jersey
in the absence of a more reliable electronic voting system. "When
the punch card system failed [in Florida], there was still plenty of
physical evidence," Felton said. "The new system uses only memory
cartridges."
Felten explained that
most electronic voting systems, including the Sequoia ones, use
standard memory cards to record votes. Similar memory cards are used
by technicians to do system software updates, which present an
opportunity to infect a machine with a vote-tampering
program.
In New Jersey, these memory
cards are the only record of the votes placed at each machine. "Once
on the machine," Felten said, "[a corrupt program] can spread like a
virus."
In spite of his concerns over
the current situation, Felten expressed optimism with regard to the
New Jersey legislature's eagerness to address the
problem.
"What will happen in NJ
remains to be seen," he said. "But I think that the New Jersey
legislature has taken a good step in getting their voting machines
revised."
Evan Magruder '08, co-chair
of P-votes — an organization that seeks to provide voters with
information and encourage voter participation — said he agreed
that the situation with the voting machines is troubling but that
voters should not be discouraged from participating in the electoral
process. "My hope is that most Princeton students aren't too
cynical," Magruder said, "We see voting as a civic duty regardless
of what could potentially happen."
Copyright 2007 Daily
Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
in any manner. Please use our Web-based
Feedback Form for comments, questions and
inquiries.
.gif)
.gif)
