California may impose hacker test on all electronic vote machines

TOM CHORNEAU   Associated Press    28 November 2005

SACRAMENTO - Companies wanting to sell electronic voting machines in California may be forced to prove their systems can withstand an attack from a computer hacker, the state's top elections official said Monday.

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said his office is planning a hacker test on a machine built by Diebold Election Systems, one of the nation's largest manufacturers of electronic voting systems. McPherson said he might seek to expand such testing to all systems seeking certification for use in California's 58 counties.

"It's all about giving the voters trust in the system," McPherson told reporters after giving opening remarks at a conference focused on testing and certification of electronic voting machines.

Several media outlets had reported that the Diebold hacker test was scheduled for Wednesday, but McPherson said the details of the arrangement are still being worked out. He said he expected the Diebold test to be performed sometime before the end of the year.

Diebold has been criticized by some activist groups as being vulnerable to outside hackers seeking to manipulate election results.

The secretary of state's office has asked Finnish security expert Harri Hursti to come to California and conduct the Diebold hacker test, said Nghia Nguyen Demovic, a spokeswoman for McPherson.

"He's been invited and we're in talks with him," Demovic said.

She said the contact was made by David Jefferson, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory who chairs a committee for McPherson that is investigating the electronic voting machines.

The tests will use a randomly ed voting machine from one of the 17 counties that currently use a Diebold system.

Diebold spokesman David Bear said company officials are confident their machines are not vulnerable to hackers.

"These are unfounded allegations that are just false," he said. "We will absolutely pass the test."

Bev Harris, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Black Box Voting, said her nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog group has been pushing California officials since June to hire Hursti for just this kind of test. Black Box wants him to recreate a test he performed in Florida in May.

"The exploits we were able to demonstrate in Florida call into question the testing that has gone on at the federal testing lab," Harris said.

If the Diebold machine could be manipulated from the outside, there's a good chance others will be, too, she said.

"We're very interested to see what else has been missed," she said.

State and local officials face a Jan. 1 federal deadline for upgrading voting machine systems to comply with new federal guidelines aimed at making systems safer and more accessible.

Meeting that deadline might be difficult for California, McPherson said.

"But the Department of Justice and others have said that you are moving in the right direction and making an earnest effort, and we're seeing good results from this already," he said. "We think we are going to be right on target."

Earlier this fall, McPherson issued 10 requirements that voting machines must meet to be used in California elections starting next year.

Those requirements include gaining approval by an independent testing unit certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and providing state officials with information about how the machines operate. It also requires companies to test their machines under Election Day conditions.

California law also requires electronic voting machines to provide paper receipts to assure voters that their votes were recorded accurately.