Gambling machines get bettery scrutiny than DREs

["Pete Klammer" <pklammer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

New York Times | Making Votes Count

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/061404L.shtml -- original at
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/opinion/13SUN1.html (may require
registration after some time).

Making Votes Count 
    New York Times | Editorial 

    Sunday 13 June 2004 

Gambling on Voting
    If election officials want to convince voters that electronic voting can
be trusted, they should be willing to make it at least as secure as slot
machines. To appreciate how poor the oversight on voting systems is, it's
useful to look at the way Nevada systematically ensures that electronic
gambling machines in Las Vegas operate honestly and accurately. Electronic
voting, by comparison, is rife with lax procedures, security risks and
conflicts of interest. 

    On a trip last week to the Nevada Gaming Control Board laboratory, in a
state office building off the Las Vegas Strip, we found testing and
enforcement mechanisms that go far beyond what is required for electronic
voting. Among the ways gamblers are more protected than voters: 

    1. The state has access to all gambling software. The Gaming Control
Board has copies on file of every piece of gambling device software
currently being used, and an archive going back years. It is illegal for
casinos to use software not on file. Electronic voting machine makers, by
contrast, say their software is a trade secret, and have resisted sharing it
with the states that buy their machines. 

    2. The software on gambling machines is constantly being spot-checked.
Board inspectors show up unannounced at casinos with devices that let them
compare the computer chip in a slot machine to the one on file. If there is
a discrepancy, the machine is shut down, and investigated. This sort of
spot-checking is not required for electronic voting. A surreptitious
software change on a voting machine would be far less likely to be detected.


    3. There are meticulous, constantly updated standards for gambling
machines. When we arrived at the Gaming Control Board lab, a man was firing
a stun gun at a slot machine. The machine must work when subjected to a
20,000-volt shock, one of an array of rules intended to cover anything that
can possibly go wrong. Nevada adopted new standards in May 2003, but to keep
pace with fast-changing technology, it is adding new ones this month. 

    Voting machine standards are out of date and inadequate. Machines are
still tested with standards from 2002 that have gaping security holes.
Nevertheless, election officials have rushed to spend hundreds of millions
of dollars to buy them. 

    4. Manufacturers are intensively scrutinized before they are licensed to
sell gambling software or hardware. A company that wants to make slot
machines must submit to a background check of six months or more, similar to
the kind done on casino operators. It must register its employees with the
Gaming Control Board, which investigates their backgrounds and criminal
records. 

    When it comes to voting machine manufacturers, all a company needs to do
to enter the field is persuade an election official to buy its equipment.
There is no way for voters to know that the software on their machines was
not written by programmers with fraud convictions, or close ties to
political parties or candidates. 

    5. The lab that certifies gambling equipment has an arms-length
relationship with the manufacturers it polices, and is open to inquiries
from the public. The Nevada Gaming Control Board lab is a state agency,
whose employees are paid by the taxpayers. The fees the lab takes in go to
the state's general fund. It invites members of the public who have
questions about its work to call or e-mail. 

    The federal labs that certify voting equipment are profit-making
companies. They are chosen and paid by voting machine companies, a glaring
conflict of interest. The voters and their elected representatives have no
way of knowing how the testing is done, or that the manufacturers are not
applying undue pressure to have flawed equipment approved. Wyle
Laboratories, one of the largest testers of voting machines, does not answer
questions about its voting machine work. 

    6. When there is a dispute about a machine, a gambler has a right to an
immediate investigation. When a gambler believes a slot machine has cheated
him, the casino is required to contact the Gaming Control Board, which has
investigators on call around the clock. Investigators can open up machines
to inspect their internal workings, and their records of recent gambling
outcomes. If voters believe a voting machine has manipulated their votes, in
most cases their only recourse is to call a board of elections number, which
may well be busy, to lodge a complaint that may or may not be investigated. 

    Election officials say their electronic voting systems are the very
best. But the truth is, gamblers are getting the best technology, and voters
are being given systems that are cheap and untrustworthy by comparison.
There are many questions yet to be resolved about electronic voting, but one
thing is clear: a vote for president should be at least as secure as a
25-cent bet in Las Vegas. 

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