Time Running Out for E-voting Security Plan
Panel calls for independent oversight of voting systems, but it may be too late

 News Story by Dan Verton

JULY 05, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - State and local jurisdictions must act immediately to ensure the security of the electronic voting systems that are to be used in the November presidential election, according to an IT security panel. But the panel's recommendations may well have come too late.

In a report released last week by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the panel outlined a strategy for certifying the security and reliability of touch-screen direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems. The systems will be used in jurisdictions representing about 30% of registered voters in the upcoming presidential election.

While analysts in the security and elections communities praised the report, most agreed that it may have come too late for states and local jurisdictions to act upon.

Chief among the panel's eight recommendations is a call for elections officials to hire a well-qualified, independent security team to examine the potential for operational failures and malicious attacks against DRE voting systems. According to the report, such a team "must be free of any business relationships with any voting system vendors or designers" and must be granted unfettered access to all software code and configuration data.

The panel also recommended that all jurisdictions contract for independent "red team" exercises to uncover any hidden physical or electronic vulnerabilities in DRE systems. And it urged election officials to make public information about the level of cooperation received from DRE system vendors.

Site-specific security procedures and physical security also weighed heavily in the panel's report. For example, the experts urged jurisdictions to use "tamper tape" on all vulnerable hardware devices and to document strict procedures for system repairs.

Jim Adler, CEO of VoteHere Inc., a Bellevue, Wash.-based developer of electronic voting security technologies, said the recommendations are an accurate reflection of what must be done.

But many of the systems and procedures for the November election are either already in place or are now being deployed. "It's late," said Adler, who was interviewed by the panel for the report. "Where was this a year ago?"

Jeremy Epstein, senior director for product security at Fairfax, Va.-based WebMethods Inc., characterized the panel's report as a set of short-term recommendations that are "exactly on the mark."

Epstein said he believes the recommendations can be implemented in time for the election. But "over the longer term," he added, "the need is clearly there for voter-verified paper audit trails or perhaps some form of cryptographically protected voting."