Reply #14: Electronic voting and partial audits - Robert Vamosi

[Mnemosyne]

February 21, 2008 10:15 AM PST

Electronic voting and partial audits

Posted by Michael Horowitz

On February 16th fellow CNET blogger Robert Vamosi wrote an item headlined "With improvements, e-voting could be good, says researcher." I think that e-voting is a very bad thing and that no "improvements" will ever convert it to a good thing. But I'm not an expert on the subject, so I asked Rebecca Mercuri, a specialist in computer security and electronic voting, if she would like to respond to the claim made by the "researcher" in question. Mercuri has appeared many times on the Personal Computer Show to discuss electronic voting, which is where our paths previously crossed. Her response is below.

Electronic Voting and Partial Audits -- Let's do the Math
Guest blogged by Rebecca Mercuri
www.notablesoftware.com

I did not attend ShmooCon 2008, but I found Robert Vamosi's synopsis of J. Alex Halderman's talk rather curious. I'm sorry to hear that Dr. Felten was ill, but it's dismaying to hear a report of yet another of his Princeton mentees extolling the praises of a hypothetical future crop of acceptable electronic balloting or counting machines.

Keep in mind, I'm actually a long-time Felten fan who stepped up to his defense a while back, when he was inappropriately trashed by an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Felten and his students are well known for their efforts over the years in exposing the vulnerabilities of electronic voting and tabulation equipment.

First, there was the now infamous 2003 report "Analysis of an Electronic Voting System" co-authored by Avi Rubin and Dan Wallach (both Ph.D. alums of Felten) with two of Avi's students (Felten grandchildren?) that blew open the security risks of the Diebold source code that had been leaked onto the Web. And then, Felten and two of his more recent students (Ariel Feldman and J. Alex Halderman) performed a further analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS during 2006 that augmented the earlier list of discovered weaknesses with even more shocking revelations.

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13554_1-9876062-33.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20