Scientists warn of possible fraud in California recall election

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- As if elections officials in California don't have enough to worry about as they prepare for a bewildering Oct. 7 recall vote, computer scientists say shoddy balloting software could bungle the results and expose the election to fraud.

Their worst-case scenario is the accidental deletion or malicious falsification of ballots from the 1.42 million Californians voting electronically -- 9.3 percent of the state's 15.3 million registered voters.

The software experts also warn that, if any candidate contests the election, a meaningful recount would prove impossible because four counties -- including two of the largest -- don't provide paper backups. The others still use punch-card machines, optical scanners or other systems that provide physical evidence of votes.

"We should put in the safeguards as soon as possible -- especially in an election that's going to be so complicated and difficult," said David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University.

The campaign to get printers and paper receipts included with voting machines gained momentum in July, when a team from Johns Hopkins and Rice universities issued a report criticizing the 33,000 machines already in use nationally that are made by Diebold Election Systems.

Diebold, based in North Canton, Ohio, produced a 27-page rebuttal, accusing researchers of a "multitude of false conclusions." Dozens of elections officials have vouched for the security of Diebold systems since the July 23 report.

Given the prevalence of computerized systems, the criticism is irresponsible, said Mischelle Townsend, registrar of voters in Riverside County, which has 4,250 touch-screens for 650,000 voters.

'1111'

A team led by Avi Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins, examined the machines' source code, which a Diebold worker anonymously published on the Internet earlier this year. His conclusion: Any clever 15-year-old could rig Diebold's system, which is based on Microsoft Windows, and vote multiple times.

Rubin also found that "1111" was Diebold's default password identification number for microchip-embedded "smartcards" that voting administrators used -- a simple PIN that any hacker might try before moving onto more sophisticated attacks. Rubin, who found "no evidence of rigorous software engineering discipline" at Diebold, added that the lack of a paper trail would make a legitimate re-count impossible.

Silicon Valley scientists say California's convoluted recall election, with 135 candidates on the ballot, could bolster their cause.

Peter G. Neumann, principal scientist at SRI International in Menlo Park, said touchscreens require voters to scroll through more than a dozen screens to look at all candidates. He questioned why such systems lack a search command and said it was "ridiculous" that voting machines in Riverside, Alameda, Plumas and Shasta counties -- principally made by Diebold and Sequoia Voting Systems -- would leave no paper trail.

Vendors and elections officials in California say no system is perfect.

A survey by CalTech and MIT found 6 percent of votes cast nationwide in the 2000 presidential election may not have been counted because of problems with antiquated systems. Punch-card machines -- which will be used by 44 percent of California voters on Oct. 7 -- are the subject of a federal challenge to the election by the American Civil Liberties Union, which says they have twice the error rate of other systems.

Brian O'Connor, vice president of sales for Oakland-based Sequoia, said computerized systems, which allow ballots to be updated until just before polls open, are more flexible and cost-efficient than mechanical systems.

"What do you do when a candidate dies or pulls out of the race a couple days before the election?" O'Connor asked. "In a computerized system, you can make that change on the fly."

Shasta County purchased 438 Sequoia machines in May, to be used for the first time on Oct. 7. The county plans a four-hour training session for poll workers, and assistant county clerk Cathy Darling is expecting a "totally valid, fraud-free election."

"Florida was a perfect example of how a paper election can get botched," Darling said.

Elections officials nationwide will watch the California vote, expected to be one of the most scrutinized since Congress set aside $3.9 billion for states to modernize voting systems with paperless terminals. As many as 75 percent of voters nationwide will cast ballots electronically by 2010.

Plumas assistant clerk recorder registrar Melinda Rother says she's "absolutely, totally and without fail confident" in the 68 computers her county's 12,740 voters will use.

But she's not taking chances: Instead of transmitting results from precincts to the county's mainframe by modem, standard practice since March 2002, Rother is dispatching couriers to hand-deliver memory cards immediately after polls close Oct. 7 -- minimizing the possibility hackers can tinker with results.

"I'll download the results to the mainframe myself, with our local media and anyone else who wants to be here watching," Rother said. "We're trying to keep complexity to a minimum, which is almost impossible under the circumstances."