Ohio: Electronic poll books seem conceptually simple but may be vulnerable to hacking and cyber attacks, experts say | cleveland.com

Cuyahoga County elections officials plan to experiment with electronic poll books to verify the registration of in-person voters despite warnings that the devices are vulnerable to hacking and even politically motivated cyber attacks. Two experts contacted by The Plain Dealer said the so-called e-poll books also have spotty performance records in several places where they have been tested and could be especially challenging for Cuyahoga County because of its larger number of voters and past troubles with new election technology. “E-poll books are similar to other computer-based technologies in voting – full of promise and lousy execution in most locations,” said Candice Hoke, a Cleveland State University law professor and an authority on laws governing election technologies. “Our counties should be extremely chary of adopting them, but definitely a pilot project is a good way to proceed.”

Kentucky: Democrats say online voting would be more secure than vulnerable Florida system | The Courier-Journal

As Kentucky Democrats make a last-minute push to allow U.S. military to vote online, Florida is reporting what appears to be the first case of someone trying to manipulate U.S. voting through the Internet. A Miami-Dade County grand jury report reveals Internet requests from computers in locations such as Ireland, England and India sought more than 2,500 absentee ballots during the primary election last August. The report said officials blocked the ballots from going out when they saw “an extraordinary number” of ballot requests from the same group of computers. Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes said her proposal for Kentucky differs from the Florida system, which didn’t require users to sign in with a password. “That example isn’t applicable to what Kentucky is trying to do,” Grimes said. But Candice Hoke, a law professor and director of the Center For Election Integrity at Cleveland State University in Ohio, said the Florida case shows that Internet voting is a potential target and that there may have been other attempts to manipulate the voting that haven’t been uncovered.

National: Cyberattack on Florida election is first known case in US, experts say | NBC

An attempt to illegally obtain absentee ballots in Florida last year is the first known case in the U.S. of a cyberattack against an online election system, according to computer scientists and lawyers working to safeguard voting security. The case involved more than 2,500 “phantom requests” for absentee ballots, apparently sent to the Miami-Dade County elections website using a computer program, according to a grand jury report on problems in the Aug. 14 primary election. It is not clear whether the bogus requests were an attempt to influence a specific race, test the system or simply interfere with the voting. Because of the enormous number of requests – and the fact that most were sent from a small number of computer IP addresses in Ireland, England, India and other overseas locations – software used by the county flagged them and elections workers rejected them. Computer experts say the case exposes the danger of putting states’ voting systems online – whether that’s allowing voters to register or actually vote. “It’s the first documented attack I know of on an online U.S. election-related system that’s not (involving) a mock election,” said David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who is on the board of directors of the Verified Voting Foundation and the California Voter Foundation.

Ohio: Election Law Quirk Could Play Big Role if Vote Tally Sparks Court Fight | Law.com

As a key battleground in this year’s presidential election, Ohio has already seen its share of voting-related litigation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has already weighed in with several rulings on the counting of provisional ballots and on expanded early voting hours. But there is another important legal issue peculiar to Ohio that hasn’t gotten much attention so far, though it will be a significant factor should the state’s election tally spark litigation. Under a little-noticed provision of Ohio law, federal election results cannot be challenged in state court.

Ohio: Election Law Quirk Could Play Big Role if Vote Tally Sparks Court Fight | American Lawyer

As a key battleground in this year’s presidential election, Ohio has already seen its share of voting-related litigation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has already weighed in with several rulings on the counting of provisional ballots and on expanded early voting hours. But there is another important legal issue peculiar to Ohio that hasn’t gotten much attention so far, though it will be a significant factor should the state’s election tally spark litigation. Under a little-noticed provision of Ohio law, federal election results cannot be challenged in state court.

Florida: State law hinders vote audits | Palm Beach Post

Candice Hoke votes, but with some skepticism: “There’s truly no legitimate basis for trusting this election software when we know it is erratic, that it sometimes produces valid results and sometimes not.” Hoke, founding director of the Cleveland-based Center for Election Integrity, said a ballot count after the election is one key way to sidestep vulnerabilities in technology. But there’s a problem. Under Florida law, supervisors can audit only a tiny slice of ballots after an election – typically no more than 2 percent of precincts – and only after the winners are formally declared. “In defense of the legislature in Florida and elsewhere,” Hoke said, “they are not trained in software; they have often been told software and computers can’t make mistakes.”

Florida: Despite state oversight, vote-counting errors abound in Florida | Palm Beach Post

Harri Hursti may be the best-known hacker you’ve never heard of. Largely unknown to the voting public, the Finnish computer programmer gained national notoriety among elections officials in 2005 when he broke into voting equipment in Leon County – at the supervisor of elections’ invitation – just to show it could be done. Hursti has since gone on to examine voting systems for other states. His conclusion: “Some systems are better than others, but none is nearly good enough.” In fact, a decade’s worth of Florida vote counting has been tripped up by technology of all makes and models, despite a state certification process designed to guard against such problems. Nationally, studies of the secret code underpinning election software have uncovered an array of troubles.

Ohio: Cuyahoga County elections board leads pack in testing, auditing | cleveland.com

To cope with ballot scanners a federal agency has deemed faulty, Cuyahoga County’s elections board has mandated four tests during each election — plus an audit afterward — to guarantee results are right. The county even received a grant from the federal agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, to produce a how-to guide on testing and auditing, to give voters throughout the country greater confidence in elections.

“The board has become a nationwide leader in assuring accurate elections and understanding that technology can fail, and it’s their job to test carefully, not just occasionally, but persistently,” said Candice Hoke, an elections professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. “That is very good news.”

Rigorous testing matters in part because the election commission last week ruled the county’s ballot scanners were out of the compliance, the first such decision in the agency’s nine-year history. The machines, made by Omaha-Neb.-based Elections Systems & Software Inc. inexplicably freeze up, miss some votes and fail to log problems.

Ohio: Agency finds defects in ballot scanners – ES&S DS200 | USAToday.com

The federal agency responsible for inspecting voting equipment said Thursday that a ballot scanner used in several key battleground states can freeze up without warning, fail to log errors and misread ballots.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission said the ballot reader, made by Omaha-based ES&S, is not in compliance with federal standards. And while it’s the first time the 8-year-old agency has taken such a step, it falls just short of decertification — a move that could force election officials to abandon the machines on the eve of the 2012 presidential primaries.

The DS200 optical-scan system is designed to read paper ballots fed into the machines by voters themselves at their precincts. It’s used in all or part of Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York and Wisconsin.

Ohio: Cuyahoga County Elections Board retrieves ballot after voter complains of missing page | cleveland.com

Cuyahoga County elections officials this week took the unusual step of retrieving an absentee ballot from a locked ballot box after a voter complained that her ballot was missing a page. Elections Director Jane Platten said Wednesday that officials acted properly when they retrieved the ballot under the watch of a board Republican and Democrat. The voter, from Strongsville, was then given the second page to cast her vote.

The incident happened on the first day of absentee voting on Tuesday. Platten said officials are certain the mistake was isolated. The board examined tablets containing blank ballots and found 20 other people who had voted previously were given two pages.

“We were able to audit the precincts of the other 20 voters who had voted prior to this person,” she said. “We were able to conclude the voters who voted previously all received two pages.”