Poli-ticks

Is it back to the future?

By Arlene Violet
Posted 12/27/17

WJAR’s Frank Coletta, news anchor extraordinaire, has been referring to “dastardly computers” for many years because of their penchant to malfunction on a moment’s notice. I …

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Poli-ticks

Is it back to the future?

Posted

WJAR’s Frank Coletta, news anchor extraordinaire, has been referring to “dastardly computers” for many years because of their penchant to malfunction on a moment’s notice. I was thinking of him, recently, as I read an article in Atlantic magazine about Barbara Simons, a pioneering computer scientist, who believes there is only one safe voting technology: paper. She eschews the electronic systems that have gained popularity ever since the 2000 presidential election with the specter of “hanging chads” in Broward County, Florida because these electronic systems are “eminently hackable” as she says. Here’s her argument.

In July 2017 Ms. Simons addressed the annual Def Con, an annual hacker’s convention. On the stage with her were 4 voting machines, three of which are types still in use. One team of hackers used radio signals to eavesdrop on the machine as it recorded votes. Another found a master password on line. Within hours of getting their hands on the voting machines, the hackers had found vulnerabilities in all four (Atlantic, Dec. 2017, "Guardian of the Vote" by Jill Leovy, p. 16).

Ms. Simon’s effort to return to paper ballots got some leverage when the Department of Homeland Security and others accused Russia of meddling with the electoral process in 21 states. No evidence, however, has emerged that Russia successfully manipulated voting systems as opposed to planting false stories or accessing databases of registered voters. News magazine program 60 Minutes did an expose wherein a computer technologist acknowledged that he would data mine the profile of various voters in a region and plant stories that would cement their vote for Trump. He was coy about working for Russia but certainly there was no basis for asserting collusion with Mr. Trump or his campaign.

Yet, the access to wireless voting machines with no paper trail is too tantalizing a proposition to allow the elimination of a paper-based system to fall by the wayside. According to the Atlantic article, some 13 states such as Pennsylvania and New Jersey have paperless voting. All 50 states use computerized scanners for vote counting but only a few of them have sufficient post-election auditing to detect manipulation. On p.18, Ms. Simons wrote that in an unaudited system malicious code interference could easily go unnoticed.

The point of the article is that given the thin majorities in Congress, more than enough machines could allow hackers to influence American politics.

So, the question is, are we ready to go back to pen and paper? Rhode Island at least has a hybrid system with paper backup, but doesn’t have a great system of randomized samplings of ballots to ensure the count is correct on the machine. The issue on the horizon here is the effort to make voting more wireless without the capability to confirm its source. While anonymity is important, can the vote still be verifiable? At least with the paper ballot put into Rhode Island’s machines it is verifiable while it is in the hands of the voter. How so over the internet?

As folks debate the “making it easy to vote" issue and the importance of not handicapping disabled voters from voting, nonetheless, the very real issue of hacking has to be addressed. After all, if Sony, Equifax, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management can be compromised, can the paperless systems of some 40 percent of registered voters who use paperless machines be far behind?

Arlene Violet is an attorney and former Rhode Island Attorney General.

Arlene Violet

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A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.