03/29/2007
Representative Millender-McDonald
Chairwoman of the House Administration Committee

I am psychologist married to a software engineer. My husband and I have
been accumulating files of research documenting serious problems with
electronic voting technology since 2003. We are alarmed by the threat
posed to our democracy by expensive, insecure, unreliable, direct
recording electronic (DRE) voting machines. We appreciate the many
provisions in Congressman Holt's bill that address election integrity
risks at the margins.

Regrettably HR 811 does not address the elephant in the room. HR 811
does not outlaw the continued widespread use of a method of vote
tabulation that is so fundamentally and irretrievably flawed that at its
worst might only give the appearance of an election. Touch screen (DRE)
voting machines are convenient, pleasant and alluring but nearly
impossible to implement with adequate security. Computer experts who
know the limitations of the technology, readily acknowledge the inherent
difficulty of building voting technology that is sufficiently secure and
reliable and auditable. With voting technology, programmers face the
herculean task of developing software for a product that is likely to be
under attack from individuals who are trying to subvert its operations.
The development and rigorous testing required to build and maintain a
sufficiently secure and reliable voting technology would ultimately be
cost prohibitive. Jason Kitcat, a British open source software
developer, concluded after three years of research that "making
electronic voting sufficiently secure would be nigh on impossible,
especially when you had to keep it anonymous and auditable."

We must not trust the recording of our vote to unobservable memory chips
and data bases. Thousands of votes can be altered undetected by a few
insiders or by outsiders if modems are used to transfer votes between
precincts. We can outlaw the use of modems in elections but how do we
know those laws are going to be enforced? Why are we paying
extraordinary sums of taxpayer money to purchase voting machines that
digitally record unobservable votes. DRE's require constant,
complicated, expensive, security procedures that are seldom
implemented. We need to do away with digital vote counting altogether
and return to paper ballots.

Our GAO has now twice enumerated the many known ways that electronic
vote tallies can be altered without detection. This information has been
widely circulated on the web. Technicians who service voting machines,
and many partisan election officials know that is is trivially easy to
hack central tabulators and/or install malicious software in DRE's. On
election day we have only one chance to get the vote count recorded
accurately. Citizens are disenfranchised when DRE's break down or flip
votes, or when VVPAT paper rolls jam. Citizens are disenfranchised when
uncertified software is installed by dishonest voting machine vendors.
Even if truly independent testing labs examine software code that is not
proprietary, it is highly unlikely that subtle malicious code would be
detected.

A transparent election system is essential to maintain the confidence of
the voter. Herein lies the essential flaw inherent in all electronic
vote tabulation systems. Vote counting that takes place inside a machine
is not visible and therefore not transparent. Continuing to allow the
use of DRE's with a verified paper trail is like putting lipstick on a
pig. Many reputable election protection advocates and computer security
experts consider DRE's with an add on paper trail to be "worse than
useless because they provide an illusion of validation". Keep in mind
it is entirely possible for the paper receipt generated by the touch
screen to show one candidate while the computer memory records a
different candidate. I implore the members of this committee to amend
HR 811 to include an unqualified ban on the use of all direct recording
electronic vote tabulating machines.

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Columbus, Ohio