February 17, 2006

"Elections chief questions use of electronic voting"

"The accuracy of California elections could be undermined if the state switches to all-electronic voting machines owned by private companies, according to San Mateo County’s chief of elections.

“Maybe the government should develop its own voting system, rather than allow private companies to refuse to turn over their source code for their machines,” Elections Chief Warren Slocum said in testimony Thursday before a state Senate committee hearing on whether federal certification for voting machines has been sufficiently rigorous.

Most, if not all, of the private companies that have so far developed election machine software have refused to turn over their programming code for inspection, citing proprietary concerns. Without the code, the systems are unverifiable and opaque, according to a panel of computer technology experts who also testified before the Senate Elections, Reapportionment and Constitutional Amendments Committee chaired by state Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach.

“Elections are not the property of any private company or individual,” said Aviel Rubin, Technology Director for the Information Security Institute at John Hopkins University. “They belong to the people.”

Slocum agreed with testimony from the panel that officials and the public should be able to audit voting machines, and he said that without a paper trail, elections offices could be forced to pay computer scientists to maintain and run elections systems."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at February 17, 2006 08:36 AM