Security concerns raised about vote-count software

Keith Ervin - Seattle Times - Sept 23, 2004

King County and five other Washington counties will count votes in the November presidential election using software that has not been reviewed or approved by the federal government's independent testing laboratories.

The modified software, provisionally certified by the state Secretary of State's Office, was first used in last week's primary election. Three voting-equipment companies made what are described as minor changes to their software to comply with Washington's new primary.

State and county officials said there were no problems with the software in the primary, but critics of electronic-voting systems said the changes make the presidential election more vulnerable to fraud.

Critics also said they saw other security problems at King County election headquarters during the count of votes last week. Those observers said they were concerned about a "crash" of the central tabulating computer, transmission of poll results by modem and failure to guard floppy disks that were inserted into the central vote-tabulating computer.

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