San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation issued an
action alert this week warning that electronic voting
machines installed without a verifiable paper audit trail
and open source software programming are vulnerable to
election fraud.
"Touchscreen voting machines can increase accessibility for
people with disabilities, reduce the cost of printing
multilingual paper ballots, and make the experience of
voting less confusing," explained EFF Legal Director Cindy
Cohn. "However, without basic auditing checks, electronic
voting machines dramatically raise the stakes for insider
and hacking attacks resulting in election fraud."
"We need to ensure that no one can hack an election," added
EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "Electronic voting
technology is wonderful, but it must also be verifiable
outside the voting booth."
The EFF action alert provides an easy way for the public
to write California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley and
ask him to ensure that California's new touchscreen
voting machines have a voter-verifiable paper audit trail,
as well as open software source code available for easy
and ongoing independent inspection.
EFF recommends that Secretary of State Shelley express
support for San Mateo County and other counties that have
already taken great strides toward verifiable voting
systems and that he require verifiable voting systems for
all other California counties.
Links:
Contact:
Cindy Cohn
Legal Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
+1 415 436-9333 x108 (office)
Lee Tien
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
+1 415 436-9333 x102 (office)
