With only five days until the Nov. 4 General Election, the integrity of New Jersey’s voting machines has been called into question by a Princeton University professor who alleges in a recently-released report that the machines are vulnerable to hackers who wish to alter election results.
The makers of the voting machines dispute the claim, saying the 158-page report contains factual errors and evidence of intellectual dishonesty on the part of the report’s authors. A rebuttal from a Carnegie Mellon University professor called the Princeton professor’s report a "lengthy diatribe against electronic voting."
Meanwhile, Carmine Casciano, superintendent of elections for Essex County, downplayed the report’s findings, said there is "less than a little" chance that the Sequoia Advantage machines, purchased by the county, can be hacked. Casciano said that Andrew W. Appel, the Princeton professor who compiled the report, only gained access to the machines after being supplied with the machines’ source codes.
"He could only do it when we told him how," Casciano said. "It’s like saying, ‘Give me your ATM card and your pin number and I can steal money from your account.’ Big deal."
Appel compiled the report on behalf of the plaintiffs in "Gusciora v. Corzine," a lawsuit filed in 2004 in which the plaintiffs argue that New Jersey’s use of the paperless, direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines is unconstitutional.
Penny Venetis, a Rutgers law professor who represents the plaintiffs, said Casciano’s comments are "most unfortunate."
"Everyone should be severely concerned about the insecurity of these machines," Venetis said. "Belittling the insecurity is basically ignoring a very serious problem."
According to Venetis, Appel was given the source codes for the voting machines only because he had very little time to test the machines and compile his report. One of Appel’s colleagues did another study where he figured out the source codes on his own, Venetis said.
"It is a big deal," she said. "If it weren’t such a big deal, the judge wouldn’t be concerned. If it weren’t such a big deal, national media wouldn’t be concerned."
The report, released earlier this month, concludes that the Sequoia Advantage voting machine, used extensively throughout New Jersey, can be hacked by someone with "only ordinary training in computer science." After gaining access to the machine, a hacker can steal votes in election after election without any additional effort, the report states.
The report adds that, even when not hacked, the machine has design flaws that can cause votes to be lost, and that encourage voter and poll-worker error.
Sequoia Voting Systems offered a point-by-point rebuttal of Appel’s report. In it, the company claims that most of the voter-fraud scenarios painted by Appel and his colleagues "depend on the existence of crooked, malicious, and corrupt pollworkers."
Sequoia defended its Advantage machine, stating it has been used successfully since 1987 and provides accurate results.
"There have never been any documented instances of fraud being carried out on the Advantage [or] on any other Sequoia machine," the rebuttal states.
Since the lawsuit was filed four years ago, there have been changes to New Jersey’s election law. In 2005, the state Legislature approved a bill requiring any New Jersey voting system to produce a voter-verified paper ballot as of Jan. 1, 2008. The deadline was subsequently extended by 12 months.
Earlier this year, the Legislature approved a bill requiring audits of election results in randomly selected districts.
Both measures were the result of the lawsuit regarding the Sequoia machines, Venetis said.
According to Casciano, there are about 1,650 Sequoia machines for Essex County’s 551 voting districts. The county starting delivering the machines to polling places this past Monday in preparation for the Nov. 4 general election.
During the Primary Election in February, there were only 23 voting-machine problems statewide, Casciano said.
"If there’s 23 problems out of 10,000 machines, that’s pretty good," he said. "We strive to be perfect. Pretty good is not perfect, but it’s better than pretty bad."
For Venetis, the small number of reported problems regarding Sequoia machines misses the point. The machines could have been hacked into already, and no one would know, she said.
"They’ve been sitting unprotected in warehouses and polling places for weeks at a time before an election, where anybody could have walked in and hacked them," Venetis said. "That’s a serious, serious problem."
She added a dire warning: "We do not know if these voting machines are counting votes as cast."
