[ISN] Ohio Elections Official Calls Machines Flawed

From: InfoSec News (alerts@private)
Date: Sun Dec 16 2007 - 22:14:34 PST


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/us/15ohio.html

By Bob Driehaus
The New York Times
December 15, 2007

CINCINNATI - All five voting systems used in Ohio, a state whose 
electoral votes narrowly swung two elections toward President Bush, have 
critical flaws that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general 
election, a report commissioned by the states top elections official has 
found.

It was worse than I anticipated, the official, Secretary of State 
Jennifer Brunner, said of the report. I had hoped that perhaps one 
system would test superior to the others.

At polling stations, teams working on the study were able to pick locks 
to access memory cards and use hand-held devices to plug false vote 
counts into machines. At boards of election, they were able to introduce 
malignant software into servers.

Ms. Brunner proposed replacing all of the states voting machines, 
including the touch-screen ones used in more than 50 of Ohios 88 
counties. She wants all counties to use optical scan machines that read 
and electronically record paper ballots that are filled in manually by 
voters.

She called for legislation and financing to be in place by April so the 
new machines can be used in the presidential election next November. She 
said she could not estimate the cost of the changes.

[...]


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