GAO
found that "significant concerns about the security and reliability of electronic voting systems" have been
raised (p. 22). GAO indicated that "some of these concerns have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections,
resulting in the loss and miscount of votes" (p. 23). According to GAO, "election officials, computer security experts, citizen
advocacy groups, and others have raised significant concerns about the security and reliability of electronic voting systems,
citing instances of weak security controls, system design flaws, inadequate system version control, inadequate security testing,
incorrect system configuration, poor security management, and vague or incomplete standards, among other issues. … The
security and reliability concerns raised in recent reports merit the focused attention of federal, state, and local authorities
responsible for election administration" (p. 22-23).
Specific Problems Identified by GAO
Based on reports from election experts, GAO compiled numerous examples of problems with electronic voting
systems including:
Flaws in System Security Controls
GAO concluded that "these weaknesses could damage the integrity of ballots, votes, and voting system software
by allowing unauthorized modifications (p. 25).
Flaws in Access Controls
According to GAO, "in the event of lax supervision, the … flaws could allow unauthorized personnel
to disrupt operations or modify data and programs that are crucial to the accuracy and integrity of the voting process" (p.
26).
Flaws in Physical Hardware Controls
GAO identified basic problems with the physical hardware of electronic voting machines. Example of problems
reported by GAO included locks that could be easily picked or were all controlled by the same keys, and unprotected switches
used to turn machines on and off that could easily be used to disrupt the voting process (p. 27).
Weak Security Management Practices by Voting Machine Vendors
GAO
reported a number of concerns about the practices of voting machine vendors, including the failure to conduct background checks
on programmers and system developers, the lack of internal security protocols during software development, and the failure
to establish clear chain of custody procedures for handling and transporting software (p. 29).
Page 39 GAO-05-956 Electronic
Voting Systems
Elections experts,
including state and local jurisdictions.82 This
compendium, among many suggested practices, includes activities to help
ensure a secure and reliable voting process throughout a voting systems'
life cycle. As another example, in July 2004,
the California Institute of
Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a report
recommending
immediate steps to avoid lost votes in the 2004 election,
including suggestions for testing
equipment, retaining audit logs, and
physically securing voting systems.83
TGDC's initial priorities have been to correct errors and
fill gaps in the 2002
standards and to supplement them with provisions
that address HAVA
requirements. In May 2005, TGDC approved
a first set of recommended
changes and delivered them to EAC. Subsequently, EAC published these
changes as proposed
voluntary voting system guidelines and requested
public comment by September 30, 2005. EAC plans to review and address
the comments it receives from the public and its standards and advisory
boards
during October 2005, and to issue the 2005 Voluntary Voting System
Guidelines shortly thereafter, depending on the nature
and volume of
comments. EAC is proposing that the 2005 voluntary voting system
guidelines
will become effective 24 months after they are adopted by the
EAC, although individual states will be
free to adopt the standards at any
time during the 24 month period. According to the EAC,
the 24 month
period is intended to give vendors the time to design and develop systems
that comply with the
new guidelines; to give testing laboratories the
opportunity to develop testing protocols, train laboratory
staff, and be
prepared to test the systems against the new guidelines; and to allow states
time
to adopt the standards, adjust their certification and acceptance
testing processes, and acquire systems
in plenty of time for future election
cycles.
However, NIST reported that several
of the topics listed in the proposed
guidelines
(including software distribution, validation of system setup, and
wireless communications) will not be
fully addressed in the 2005 update,
and will need to be updated in a future version of the guidelines.
Furthermore, key security and
reliability improvements to the existing
standards (including guidance for the security of COTS software; ensuring
the correctness
of software, testing, and documentation for system
security; enhancements to the precision and testability
of the standards;
and the usability of error messages) have been deferred until the
subsequent
set of guidelines is developed.
EAC officials acknowledged that
these changes will not be made in the initial set of guidelines, and
reiterated that
they are focusing on what can be done in time to meet the
HAVA-mandated delivery date for the initial set of guidelines
