From
Tri-City Herald
US elections still vulnerable to rigging, disruption
December 26, 2016 9:16 AM
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM and FRANK BAJAK
Associated Press
ALLENTOWN, Pa.
Jill Stein's bid to recount votes in Pennsylvania was in trouble even before a federal judge shot it down Dec. 12. That's because the Green Party candidate's effort stood almost no chance of detecting potential fraud or error in the vote — there was basically nothing to recount.
Pennsylvania is one of 11 states where the majority of voters use antiquated machines that store votes electronically, without printed ballots or other paper-based backups that could be used to double-check the balloting. There's almost no way to know if they've accurately recorded individual votes — or if anyone tampered with the count.
More than 80 percent of Pennsylvanians who voted Nov. 8 cast their ballots on such machines, according to VotePA, ...
These paperless digital voting machines, used by roughly 1 in 5 U.S. voters last month, present one of the most glaring dangers to the security of the rickety, underfunded U.S. election system. Like many electronic voting machines, they are vulnerable to hacking. But other machines typically leave a paper trail ...
What's more, their prevalence magnifies other risks in the election system, such as the possibility that hackers might compromise the computers that tally votes, ...
"If I were going to hack this election, I would go for the paperless machines because they are so hard to check," said Barbara Simons, a former IBM executive and co-author of "Broken Ballots," a history of the unlearned lessons of flawed U.S. voting technology.
FRAUD AND THE U.S. VOTING SYSTEM
Although Stein premised her recount effort on the need to ensure that the 2016 election wasn't tainted by hacking or fraud, there's no evidence of either so far ...
Stein also pursued recounts in Wisconsin and Michigan, to little avail. Those states use more reliable paper-based voting technologies. ...
But a cadre of computer scientists from major universities backed Stein's recounts to underscore the vulnerability of U.S. elections. These researchers have been successfully hacking e-voting machines for more than a decade in tests commissioned by New York, California, Ohio and other states.
Stein and her witnesses said their fraud concerns were justified given U.S. charges that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential campaign. ...
"It's a target-rich environment," said Rice University computer scientist Dan Wallach. ...
Green Party lawyers seeking the Pennsylvania recount called the state's election system "a national disgrace" in a federal lawsuit, noting that many states outlaw paperless voting. They asked a judge to order a forensic examination of a sampling of the electronic machines, ...
...
But forensic analyses aren't foolproof, especially if hackers were good at covering their tracks. ...
PENNSYLVANIA: A PERFECT TARGET
The U.S. voting system — a loosely regulated, locally managed patchwork of more than 3,000 jurisdictions overseen by the states — employs more than two dozen types of machinery from 15 manufacturers. ...
All that makes national elections very difficult to steal without getting caught. ...
But difficult is not impossible. Wallach and his colleagues believe a crafty team of pros could strike surgically, focusing on select counties in a few battleground states where "a small nudge might be decisive," he said.
As a battleground state with paperless voting machines, Pennsylvania is a perfect candidate. In affidavits for the recount, computer scientist J. Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan laid out how attackers could conduct a successful hack:
—Probe election offices well in advance to determine how to break into computers.
—After identifying battleground states, infect voting machines in targeted counties with malware that would shift a small percentage of the vote to a desired candidate.
—After silently altering electronic tallies, erase digital tracks to leave no trace.
...
Studies by Halderman, Wallach and others proved years ago that it's possible to infect voting machines in an entire precinct via the compact flash cards used to load electronic ballots.
...
HACKING THE COUNT
Vote-tallying systems, typically at the county level, are also tempting targets. They tend to be little more than PCs running a database.
Tabulation databases at the county level, which collect results from individual precincts, are supposed to be "airgapped," or disconnected from the internet at all times — though experts say they sometimes get connected anyway. ...
Vulnerabilities notwithstanding, there are no known cases of U.S. tallying systems being hacked. ...
Shelby County, Tennessee, home to Memphis, has seen a flood of lawsuits related to alleged tabulation errors, ... "Nearly every election cycle in the county in recent memory has been plagued by a myriad of errors and complaints of wrongdoing," Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett wrote in a 2012 letter to the state comptroller ...
OLD AND GETTING OLDER
Most voting machines in the U.S. are at or near the end of their expected lifespans. Forty-three states use machines more than a decade old. ...
On Nov. 8, election officials across the U.S. handled numerous complaints of aging touchscreens losing calibration and casting votes for the wrong candidate. Such "vote flipping" tends to get exaggerated attention on social media ...
But while many experts agree the U.S. voting system needs an upgrade, no one wants to pay to fix it.
From the private-sector perspective, it's a tiny market. University of Iowa computer scientist Douglas Jones estimates that voting-equipment makers pull in total annual revenues of less than $200 million — roughly what Google generates in a day. The biggest player, ES&S, is private and has just 450 full-time employees. (Researchers worry that smaller companies like these are also much more vulnerable to hacking by sophisticated state actors.)
The sector boomed after the 2000 Florida recount debacle, ... Congress appropriated $4 billion for election upgrades, and the states raced to replace punch cards and lever machines with digital technology.
But when that money ran out, so did many states' ability to address security concerns they'd overlooked in their initial rush. ...
DISPARATE IMPACT
Voters in poorer areas suffer disproportionately, the center found. ...
...
Just as Congress delivered a death blow to punch cards, it should also outlaw paperless touchscreen voting machines and pay for their replacement, said Andrew Appel, a Princeton University computer scientist.
But even counties that can afford better voting tech face problems.
The clerk of Travis County, Texas, Dana DeBeauvoir, has been trying for a decade to build a bulletproof electronic voting system, ...
The Travis County system would have a paper trail and use encryption systems to let voters confirm online that their vote counted and wasn't subject to tampering. For transparency, DeBeauvoir wants to use open source software that anyone can examine, not the proprietary code the industry uses.
None of the major vendors has shown interest, she says. ...
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Bajak reported from Houston. Associated Press writers Tami Abdollah in Washington and Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, contributed to this report.