Recent Penn State research of touch screen and optical scan voting machines indicated that the systems have exploitable weaknesses and hacking vulnerabilities.
Though the study involved Ohio voting machines, this may mean more trouble for Centre County's voting machines -- touch screens that debuted in the November 2006 midterm elections.
Patrick McDaniel, an associate professor of computer science and engineering, was the principal investigator of Project Evaluation and Validation of Election Related Equipment, Standards and Testing (EVEREST), which evaluated reliability, usability and security of the three different voting systems that Ohio uses.
Project EVEREST was interested in how people who have access to the voting system could manipulate an election, McDaniel said. Three types of attacks were outlined, including changing election results, exposing voter choices and preventing a vote from being cast or counted, he added.
"We use the tools that hackers would use and our expertise, and we attempt to subvert the system just like we were the bad guys," he said. "Ultimately, we were able to substantially compromise all of the systems we evaluated. They all had failures in unique ways."
This week, McDaniel will be talking at five open forums held throughout the state to discuss the study and its implications in Pennsylvania, McDaniel said.
As part of the Help America Vote Act, Centre County chose to move from a punch card system to a touch-screen system in 2006 after considering an optical scan system, as well, according to Daily Collegian archives. At the time, the switch was estimated to cost the county a total of $1.4 million.
Centre County Commissioner Rich Rogers announced last Tuesday that public forums will soon be held in the county to discuss what actions Centre County should take regarding its current voting machines, which don't provide a verifiable paper record to the voter.
"We really want to open the process up because this isn't an issue that just faces Centre County or the state; it is a nationwide issue," he said. "Developing a process that is fair and open is very important to ensure that we're able to cross our 't's and dot our 'i's when we make our final decision."
While it is too late to change the machines before Pennsylvania's April 22 primary, Rogers said there is an option to switch the machines before the general election on Nov. 8.
Mary Vollero, chair of the Concerned Voters of Centre County, said her group has been fighting to get the current voting machines out of the county.
"They're not dependable. They're not reliable. They're not secure," she said.
New systems should be installed that have a voter-verified paper ballot, Vollero said.
"The voter can actually see the record, and that is the record that would be used if there were any problems -- if there was a contested election or a recount," she said.
Vollero said she is in favor of optical scan machines because they have been around for at least 15 years and are, therefore, tested and more reliable.
"If something happens to the machine, the voter can drop their ballot in a box and it can be recounted," she said.
