Md. to use 'high-risk' voting machinesBy TOM STUCKEY
Associated Press
09/25/2003
ANNAPOLIS -- Maryland will go ahead with plans to buy $55.6 million worth of electronic voting machines, relying on a consultant's report that numerous potential security problems can be fixed before the presidential primary next March.
"We remain very confident in this voting system," James "Chip" DiPaula, state budget secretary, said Wednesday.
He said Diebold Election Systems has already incorporated three new security features to correct problems that critics of the touch-screen machines say made them vulnerable to massive election fraud.
Other "vulnerabilities" cited by the consultant, Science Application International Corp., will be corrected by security procedures to be implemented by state and local election boards, DiPaula said.
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The report did not satisfy Avi Rubin, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, whose study released in July prompted national debate over the security of electronic voting systems. Rubin, lead researcher on the report, said at the time that the Diebold system was so flawed it could be easily manipulated.
Rubin noted Wednesday that the consultant's report said the existing system "is at high risk of compromise" and that it confirmed some of the major flaws he found in the voting machines.
"I think the logical thing to do at this point is to suspend plans to use that system," he said.
David Dill, a Stanford University computer science professor, said he still has concerns about the machines, including the possibility that a malicious code could be inserted by a programmer at Diebold.
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