Elections chief tightens vote security

By Keith Ervin
Seattle Times staff reporter
September 25, 2003

King County's newly appointed elections chief has taken steps to reduce the possibility of computerized vote-tampering while he studies questions raised about possible security flaws in software the county uses to tally election results.

Dean Logan, who became director of records, elections and licensing services this month, said yesterday he has tightened security by restricting employee access to a key election software program and removing other software from the elections computer.

Logan also said he will ask for a formal response by Diebold Election Systems to claims that the company's vote-counting systems may be vulnerable to tampering.

"We're going to take it extremely seriously because we want to be sure that voters are confident that their votes are counted and counted as they intended them to be counted," Logan said.

"If there are problems with the software, we're going to get to the bottom of that."

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