In his September 13th commentary in a popular technology magazine, “E-Voting does work,”
Harris Miller proved he is more out of touch with reality than Mr. Rothke
when he compared elections with Internet commerce and wrote that “No
verifiable instance of e-voting machine tampering has occurred.”

First of all, let’s define the distinct difference between an E-Commerce
transaction and E-voting.

If I order a DVD online, there are only two possible outcomes:

1) I will receive my DVD
2) I will NOT receive my DVD

Either way, I will ultimately know if my electronic transaction was
successful or not. I expect to receive a physical product or service as a
result of that electronic transaction.

With E-voting, even if I received a printout stating who I voted for,
there is no verifiable way of knowing if my electronic vote “actually
counted” towards the candidate that I voted for. If my candidate gets
elected or not, how do I know that my particular individual vote, actually
“registered” as a vote for that candidate? What if I wanted to vote for a “write-in” candidate?

To the contrary, traditional paper ballots leave a physical trail
(including hanging chads) as a means of challenging election results if a
controversy were to ever arise.

While E-commerce and electronic tax filing are potentially vulnerable to
Internet hackers, at least most individuals are able to produce a paper
trail and are able to account for their financial records (i.e. balancing
a check book, etc.). Even if someone’s identity is stolen, it is very
possible to recover from identity theft.

E-voting, however, was dropped from the U.S. Deparment of Defense because
there was no way to be certain that a specific vote came from a specific
voter. The argument of E-voting tampering is not the only issue; there is
also the issue of computer bugs or bad programming code. A missing
semicolon could cause a voter to to inadvertently cast a vote for
Candidate A instead of Candidate B.

It was stated in the September 13th article that the E-voting (DRE)
machines are not connected to the Internet but it was not mentioned that
some DRE machines have the capacity for remote connections. This is how
the vendors download software patches to these devices.

I’ve never met a “remote connection” that a hacker didn’t like.

Besides that, what’s to keep some rogue DRE machine vendor from altering
the election results?

Let’s say that instead of tampering via “remote connection” that someone
or some group physically vandalizes a DRE machine. What method would be
used to recount the electronic ballots?

Electronic voting is proven and practical? Perhaps we should ask the
voters in Alameda County, California and in San Diego County, California
where as recently as this past March, over 600 DRE machines either failed
or displayed faulty information on the screen. As a matter of fact, the
California Secretary of State has banned these DRE machines from at least
four counties altogether for this season’s upcoming elections.

Or what about North Carolina’s 2002 general election where the DRE
machines deleted over 400 votes due to a software bug?

Or what about a 2002 Kansas primary election where a microchip error was
blamed for a miscount of votes?

So much for “proven and practical.”