[LINK] Electronic voting source code released

[Tony Barry]

Electronic voting source code released
14:22 07 April 04
NewScientist.com news service

A US company that makes software for electronic voting machines has 
taken the unprecedented decision to make public all its proprietary 
computer code. It hopes this will assuage the fears of voters and 
computer experts that the technology cannot be trusted to carry out 
free and fair elections.

VoteHere, based in Washington State, has placed the software used to 
control some e-voting machines on its website for free downloading. A 
"voting machine simulation" is also included that lets programmers see 
precisely how the code would work in practice.

"You can actually program it to cheat, and you can watch where the 
protocol detects where your ballot was changed," company founder Jim 
Adler, told MSNBC. "Now it's up to the world to take a look and dig in 
and give us their opinion."

Prior to releasing its source code, VoteHere had it examined by an 
outside consultancy firm called Plus Five. A statement from Plus Five 
founder Robert Baldwin describes the code as written "in a professional 
and consistent style, making it easy to understand and review".

VoteHere's software has yet to be used in any official elections and 
the company's code includes a list of improvements that it plans to 
make. But Dan Wallach at Rice University in Texas says releasing it is 
an important decision. "I applaud VoteHere," Wallach told New 
Scientist. "Releasing the code is important for the transparency of any 
election using the technology."


Paper trail


Electronic voting devices hold the promise of making elections faster, 
cheaper and less prone to the disputes over ballot papers that marred 
the 2001 US presidential elections.

However, many experts maintain no electronic voting system can be 
considered secure unless there is also a back-up paper trail, which no 
existing systems currently provide. "The paper trail is the only way we 
know to work around the risk of someone tampering with the code 
itself," Wallach says.

E-voting technology has been controversial from the start. In July 
2003, academics including Wallach and others at Johns Hopkins 
University in Maryland, claimed to have discovered serious flaws in the 
computer code used to operate the most popular US e-voting machines, 
made by Ohio-based company Diebold.

  The code was taken from the company's website and posted online 
without permission and Diebold has always maintained that it was 
unfinished. Despite such concerns, Diebold's e-voting machines were 
certified for use in September 2003.

Experts also expressed concern in January 2004 when some of Diebold's 
voting machines were revealed to be designed to enable the wireless 
transmission of votes. They warned that this could make the devices 
more vulnerable to outside tampering.

  In the same month the Pentagon also cancelled an online voting 
experiment after a group of academics concluded that no internet-based 
election system could be completely secure.

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