The Progressive

NewsWire

A project of Common Dreams

For Immediate Release
Contact:

Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Voting Machines

WASHINGTON

DAN WALLACH

Wallach is an associate professor at Rice University and also the
associate director of the National Science Foundation's ACCURATE (A
Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent
Elections), a $7.5 million research effort across six different
institutions to improve U.S. election systems. He said today:
"Present-day electronic voting systems have a variety of security
flaws, many of which you have heard about. Of course, we can find
problems with any voting system, but the present-day electronic systems
enable fraud of a scale and simplicity previously unknown in the
administration of elections."

Wallach added: "Our work [reviewing electronic voting systems in
California] found a wide variety of flaws, most notably the possibility
of 'viral' attacks, where a single corrupted voting machine could
spread that corruption, as part of regular processes and procedures, to
every other voting system. In effect, one attacker, corrupting one
machine, could arrange for every voting system in the county to be
corrupt in the subsequent election."

More Information

PAMELA SMITH 
Smith is president of the Verified Voting Foundation and its sister advocacy organization VerifiedVoting.org.
She said today: "Voters should be able to check that their votes were
recorded accurately; election officials should be able to prove that
votes were counted correctly. Post-election audits of voter-verified
paper ballots are the best way to make sure voting systems are working
as they should -- a potent safeguard on our election process."

A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.