Let’s talk voting today.

Well, it’s been proven, once again, that electronic voting machines, as they exist today, should not be trusted with our votes.

A recent test of voting machine security was conducted in California and most of the electronic voting machines tested failed miserably.

State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California’s voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems’ electronic functions, according to a University of California study released Friday.

The researchers “were able to bypass physical and software security in every machine they tested,” said Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who authorized the “top to bottom review” of every voting system certified by the state.

Neither Bowen nor the investigators were willing to say exactly how vulnerable California elections are to computer hackers, especially because the team of computer experts from the UC system had top-of-the-line security information plus more time and better access to the voting machines than would-be vote thieves likely would have.

“All information available to the secretary of state was made available to the testers,” including operating manuals, software and source codes usually kept secret by the voting machine companies, said Matt Bishop, UC Davis computer science professor who led the “red team” hacking effort, said in his summary of the results

Despite the team having access to the source code, I still see this as a big issue because in general, a state does not get access to this software so, its IT (information technology) has no way of auditing to determine if a program is working as it should. Therefore, if a hacker was able to alter a program on the voting machine, it would likely not be caught by people at the state level and elections could be altered.

With the 2008 primaries and general elections around the corner, we need a safe, reliable method of voting.

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