Security measures urged for voting machines
Baltimore SunResults tallied by Maryland's 16,000 new electronic voting machines can be trusted in their first statewide test during the March 2 presidential primary, but only with some added security measures, a state official and a consultant told legislators yesterday.
Linda H. Lamone, the state's election administrator, said she is planning to use the tamper-proof tape, but told legislators she is concerned about the ramifications of some of the other suggested fixes.
But she said the security patches cannot be installed over the next 33 days. Other preparation work is being done on the machines and changing the software could interfere with that.
"We are risking a catastrophic failure," she said. "It doesn't seem to be worth it at this step of the game."
What she is saying, better to risk disenfranchising people's votes rather than apply security patches to close the holes.
Some of the attacks would mess up the official results while others would impact unofficial results, which could be remedied but would bring the machines into greater question in the court of public opinion.
You 're more secure buying a book from Amazon.com than you are uploading your results to the Diebold server," Wertheimer told the House panel.