When the server responsible for electronically tabulating all of Cuyahoga County's votes crashed during the 2007 general election, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Nance can't say he didn't see it coming.
Just two weeks prior, the state began looking at the results of Project EVEREST, which stands for Evaluation and Validation of Election-Related Equipment, Standards and Testing report. The preliminary report, compiled by a team of academic and corporate testers, concluded that Ohio voting equipment had numerous security weaknesses ' including unstable software that could lead to computer failure.
We were looking at the preliminary report
reading their findings and then we were watching it happen right in front of us Nance said.
While those votes were eventually counted, the incident led the Ohio secretary of state's office to start reaching out to Ohioans about fixing election problems. Nance and Patrick McDaniel, associate professor at Pennsylvania State University, addressed those issues at a forum yesterday in Baker University Center.
McDaniel headed up a group of researchers and graduate students who tested every security aspect of Ohio's voting systems. Those in attendance listened to McDaniel, the head of Project EVEREST, explain the problems in Ohio's voting equipment. Almost all election methods are vulnerable to manipulation, creating a need for voting software to be redesigned to be as secure as possible, he said.
Someone with an understanding of the software can manipulate one method, direct recording electronic (DRE) touch-screens, McDaniel said. Members of his team found ways to vote several times without ever leaving the voting machine.
This led the report to recommend optical scanning, which uses a paper ballot filled out by the voter that is read by a machine at the voting place. It also calls for unofficial counting to begin at the precinct level, as opposed to only counting votes at a central location. This sets up a system for the vote totals to be checked before the official numbers are released, Nance said.
McDaniel stressed the problems with voting machines were mostly universal, but that optical scanning is the best option. While 53 of Ohio's 88 counties use DRE voting systems, Athens County is already on board with the Secretary of State's initial recommendation, said Debbie Quivey, Athens County Board of Elections director.
Athens County uses optical scan voting and starts the unofficial count at the polling places, she said. Athens County is one of 35 counties using optical scan technology.
The 71 optical scan machines used in Athens County cost $6,000 each, with all but two machines paid for with federal funds, said Penny Brooks, deputy director of board of elections. Hocking County, which uses the state's most popular DRE system, spends $2,700 per machine, said Nancy Robison, deputy director of Hocking County Board of Elections.
But DRE systems carry hidden costs, such as memory cards, voter cards, and central servers used to tabulate votes, said Patrick Gallaway, director of communications for the secretary of state's office.
The state's March 4 primary election will provide lots of feedback for the secretary of state's office before a final recommendation is made and is placed into the Ohio Revised Code sometime before the general election in November, Nance said. Forum addresses voting equipmentForum addresses voting equipment
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