My guess is ‘no’. Since three vendors were accused of having weak and hackable e-voting machines, it would probably be in the best interest to just used the old-fashioned paper system. Granted these voting machines can be patches up before the California election in six months, but who says that there won’t be any more vulnerabilities that can be exploited, possibly even to the point of rigging the election?

SACRAMENTO — Voting machine vendors and election officials at a hearing Monday assailed Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s “top-to-bottom” review of electronic voting systems for failing to consider real-world responses to potential hacking and vote-rigging. Voting-rights activists, meanwhile, urged her to scrap all e-voting systems and return to paper ballots.Bowen has the rest of the week to sort it all out before she decides whether to decertify the three voting systems in use in California, place conditions on them, or leave them alone. A report filed last week showed that all three systems — Sequoia, Diebold and Hart InterCivic — were easily hacked by a team of computer experts Bowen had commissioned to probe the machines for weaknesses.

Sequoia Voting Systems, which is used in Alameda, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties, called the review an “unrealistic, worst-case scenario” performed in a laboratory environment by computer security experts with unfettered access to the machines.[more]

Tags: Computer Protection