BY MIKE CETERA
Remember when officials tried to convince people that electronic voting -- the wave of the future -- was a secure way to conduct elections? Turns out, replacing the old punch-card ballots doesn't mean an automatic increase in election integrity.
A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice suggests electronic voting is vulnerable to errors and fraud, despite what election officials have told us.
According to the study, "voter-verifiable paper records by themselves are 'of questionable security value.' Paper records will not prevent programming errors, software bugs or the introduction of malicious software into voting systems."
Kane County voters know the problems with the paper records firsthand. Last November, some poll place officials were unaware that paper ballots were included in their voting kits, compounding widespread problems that caused a judge to extend voting hours by 90 minutes.
Post-election auditing of those records, which Illinois requires, helps. But, as the study observed, audits don't go far enough to prevent someone that voters didn't choose from taking office.
"Of the few states that currently require and conduct post-election audits, none has adopted audit models that will maximize the liklihood of finding clever and targeted software-based attacks, non-systematic programming errors and software bugs that could change the outcome of an election." (emphasis added)
The study includes several instances in Illinois where the electronic machines worked improperly (we know there are more). The most disturbing occurred during the gubernatorial election, when some Chicago voters became victims of vote switching -- they would choose one candidate's name on the touch screen and the machine would record the selection of another candidate.
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