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Reports of Russian intrusions into U.S. election systems have startled many voters, but computer experts are not surprised. They have long warned that Americans vote in a way that's so insecure that hackers could change the outcome of races.
The 2000 presidential election count prompted widespread abandonment of paper-based systems, such as punch ballots. But the rush to embrace electronic voting technology created vulnerabilities.
"There are computers used in all points of the election process, and they can all be hacked," said Princeton computer scientist Andrew Appel, an expert in voting technologies.
The Russian hacks to voter registration systems in Arizona and Illinois exposed one of the major weak spots in election systems. Deleting or altering data on voter rolls could cause mayhem on election day, disenfranchising some voters. Many voting machines themselves also are vulnerable, especially touch-screen systems.
Several swing states, including Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia, are struggling to rid their polling stations of insecure touch-screen systems. Other states still use them at every polling station.
Experts say fears of potential hacks by foreign intelligence services are legitimate. Databases of all sorts have been routinely pilfered by hackers for years, meaning that voter rolls are vulnerable too.
"I am not an expert on reading Vladmir Putin's mind, but destroying the voter registration databases would be an excellent way to cause chaos," said Dan S. Wallach, a Rice University computer science professor who long has studied the security of election systems.
Altering lists of registered voters could potentially cause long lines or other problems on election day, leading some people to not cast ballots.
http://www.scnow.com/bh_media_news_service/article_13fa5704-382d-50a0-ade3-988a5be547eb.html
