Scientists Say Unreliable Software Exposes California Recall to Fraud

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http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA9T8I7DJD.html

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - As if California officials don't have enough to worry about ahead of the bewildering gubernatorial recall vote Oct. 7, computer scientists say shoddy balloting software could bungle the results and expose the election to fraud.

Their worst-case scenario is the accidental deletion or malicious falsification of ballots from the 1.42 million Californians who could vote on electronic touch-screen machines. These voters comprise 9.3 percent of the state's 15.3 million registered voters.

The software experts also warn that, if any candidate contests the election, a meaningful recount would prove impossible because four counties - including two of the largest - don't provide paper backups to the electronic machines. The other counties still use punch-card machines, optical scanners or other systems that provide physical evidence of votes. snip

A team led by Avi Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins, examined the machines' source code, which a Diebold worker anonymously published on the Internet earlier this year. His conclusion: Any clever 15-year-old could rig Diebold's system, which is based on Microsoft Windows, and vote multiple times.

Rubin also found that "1111" was Diebold's default password identification number for microchip-embedded "smartcards" that voting administrators used - a simple PIN that any hacker might try before moving onto more sophisticated attacks. Rubin added that the lack of a paper trail would make a legitimate re-count impossible.

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