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The Voting Chip
// A Kommersant evaluates the U.S. electronic voting system
Kommersant special correspondent Dmitry Sidorov went to a school in Bethesda, Maryland, not far from Washington. He was interested in electronic voting using Premier Election Solutions, which was involved in a voting scandal four years ago.
Four years ago, Premier Election Solutions was called Diebold Election Systems. The name was changed after the scandal, when George W. Bush triumphed over John Kerry. Many people said openly then that the software of the Diebold equipment was “loaded” by the company to favor the Republicans. Diebold apologized at length for the performance of their machines and avoided criminal proceedings in California in 2004 only with difficulty, reaching an out-of-court settlement and paying $2.6 million.
“It is hard for me to imagine how it would be possible now to break into the programming of the machine unnoticed,” Michael Rice, Republican Party chief inspector for that precinct, told Kommersant the day before voting began. “The equipment is under our observation and any hacker would need 7 minutes to break into the programming in case we didn’t catch him.”
The 12 Diebold machines are positioned so that so that all precinct workers can see the red seals across the slots for software. Half an hour before the precinct opened, inspectors checks the seals to make sure no voting results were fed into the machines in advance.
The voting procedure is not complicated. The voter comes up to a table where elections committee workers are seated and gives his name and address. The workers check his information in the computer and give the voter a preprogrammed card with an electronic chip in it. After the voter has gone to the machine and voted, he returns the card to a commission member, who reprograms it for use by the next voter. There were 60 such cards at the precinct the Kommersant correspondent visited.
Unlike some other American states, where it is required to show identification or a voter’s card to vote, that is not necessary in Maryland. “We don’t want to put people in an uncomfortable position,” Rice explained. He admitted that, if a person wanted to use a different name and address, the commission members would not be able to uncover it immediately.
Voting proceeded and none of the machines broke, which would have given the Kommersant correspondent a chance to look at one more closely. They are similar to scanners with large touch screens, in a black plastic casing on four legs. The card is inserted into a slot on the right side of the machine, the voter presses “start” and the names of the presidential candidates appear before him. The voter indicates the candidate he wishes to vote for and presses “finish.” His mission is over.
Half an hour after voting began, the lines have disappeared. Once again, voters may come and complete the voting process in 7 minutes. “This precinct probably won’t give the lead to McCain,” admitted Rice. “They usually vote for Democrats here.” Republican Michael Rice thinks Barack Obama will be elected president. “The Republicans have no one but themselves to blame for a Democrat coming to office,” he said.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 05, 2008
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