COUNTING ON THEM

There were few mishaps in the midterm elections, but computer engineers say that doesn't mean voting machines aren't fraught with risks.

Computer engineers and scientists have long warned that most electronic voting machines-especially those that don't produce a paper record-are unreliable, subject to hacking, malfunctioning software and human error. Nevertheless, they are now in widespread use: 55 million people who voted Nov. 7 in the nation's important midterm elections cast their ballots on some form of a computerized machine. But although there were scores of glitches caused by misbehaving machines reported around the country, there were no major meltdowns-much to the relief of worried computer experts.

"It went great," admits Ted Selker, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist and critic of computer voting. He gives credit to the many computer researchers who have helped raise the issue of the risks inherent in electronic voting machines. "All this scrutiny has made election officials paranoid, which is good."

That said, Selker and other critics of electronic voting say November's relatively trauma-free elections don't prove the machines are now more reliable. "We're not out of the woods yet," he says. "We're just going into the woods." He and others continue to insist that use of computerized machines will remain fraught with risks until more- secure controls and reliable backup systems are universally introduced. That point was underscored late last year in a report on how voting machines performed in November by the nonpartisan, electionline.org. Noting the widespread hitches that occurred, it said: ". . . there were also serious problems that will require analysis and action before Americans return to the polls." Avi Rubin, the Johns Hopkins University computer scientist who authored the book, "Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting," has argued that no voting system should ever rely entirely on software.

That point was ominously demonstrated last September, less than two months before the elections, when researchers led by Princeton University computer scientist Edward Felten showed how they could, within a minute, introduce vote-altering software into a popular touch-screen machine and how that the virus could spread automatically and anonymously from machine to machine during normal use. Moreover, they determined that the " secure" door that protects the machine's memory card, which registers the votes, is locked by a standard-issue key, the kind often used for filing cabinets and hotel room mini-bars. And it's a key that's easy to purchase online. The Princeton team used a Diebold AccuVote-TS, a voting machine that was used by about 10 percent of the voting public. But Felten is confident he could have hacked into any machine just as easily.

The big push into electronic voting came in the wake of the ballot-counting fiasco in Florida in the 2000 presidential election, where a handful of suspect votes gave Republican George W. Bush a whisker-thin edge over his Democratic rival Al Gore and handed him the White House. Congress, in 2002, enacted a law to help fund states' purchases of electronic voting machines. Sixty-three percent of voters now vote on machines that are more high-tech. Many use optical-scan technology, which scans and records paper ballots. But 39 percent of voters now cast ballots on touch-screen machines, also called direct-recording electronic voting machines, or DREs. DREs record the votes electronically and do not issue paper records of any sort, unless customized to do so. Touch-screen machines are now used in 37 states, and only 22 of them require some sort of paper trail.

Most computer experts say paper records are necessary to allow for thorough audits and accurate recounts, when recounts are required. Otherwise, the tabulators have to rely on whatever the software says. And in a recount, electronic machines will just repeat their first count. "What's the point of hitting a button and spewing out the same results?" Felten asks. In the Virginia U.S. Senate race, slightly less than 9,000 votes separated winner Jim Webb, the Democratic challenger, from George Allen, the Republican incumbent, out of 2.37 million cast. Webb's squeaker of a victory also handed his party control of the Senate. Yet despite the importance of the race and the narrowness of his loss, Allen opted not to demand a recount. Virginia is a state where paper trails are not required. "And that may have influenced his decision," Felten says.

UNDERVOTING

The biggest Election Day bugaboo involving touch-screen machines occurred in Florida's 13th Congressional District, where initial results showed Republican Vern Buchanan beating Democrat Christine Jennings by a mere 377 votes. (There was a bit of a déjà-vu aspect in this race, since the House seat up for grabs was vacated by Katherine Harris, who made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate. Harris in 2000 was Florida's secretary of state who certified Bush's victory.) In Sarasota, where machines manufactured by Election Systems and Software were used, there were 18,382 "undervotes" in the House race, about 13 percent of the total cast in Sarasota. The undervote rate in the Senate and gubernatorial races was just 1 percent. Undervotes are where voters don't record a preference in a race but vote in other rapes on the ballot. "It's just astonishing to get so many undervotes in a congressional race," says Douglas Jones, a computer scientist at the University of Iowa. "That more than 10 percent of the population went to the polls and decided not to vote is not credible. It clearly demonstrates a problem."