LTE – JoAnn Utphall – 3-10-2021
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A lot of municipalities in Dunn County are purchasing the Dominion Image Cast Evolution (ICE) model voting machines. The ICE voting machine has been approved by the Wisconsin Election Commission but NOT by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The EAC approved certain Dominion voting machines but not the ICE model.
Why doesn’t the EAC approve of this electronic voting machine?
Co-chair of the N.Y. State Board of Elections and University of Princeton Prof. Andrew Apell writes specifically about the ICE model; that it has serious design flaws. After the voter reviews the ballot, the voting machine can print more votes on it. Appel explains, “When we use computers to count votes, it’s impossible to absolutely prevent a hacker from replacing the computer’s software with a vote-stealing program that deliberately miscounts the vote. Therefore (in almost all the states) we vote on paper ballots. We count the votes with optical scanners (which are very accurate when they haven’t been hacked), and to detect and correct possible fraud-by-hacking, we recount the paper ballots by hand.”
As Appel puts it, “Combining the Ballot Marking Device with the scanner is a really bad idea! Remember, the purpose of the paper ballot is to guard against cheating by hacked voting computers. If the optical-scanners have been hacked, they lie about what’s on the paper ballots. We can detect this fraud by recounting a random sample of the paper ballots.
But the ImageCast Evolution can print right onto your ballot, after you insert it into the slot. From the diagram of the paper path, above, it’s pretty clear that the same bidirectional paper path contains both the scanner and the printer. That means it can cast more votes onto your ballot… Hacker exploits a security vulnerability of the ImageCast voting machine or on the election-administration laptop computer that prepares ballot files. For example, the ImageCast has several USB ports, and USB is notoriously insecure. Hacker uses this vulnerability to install additional software on the ImageCast, that fills in additional ovals on the op-scan ballot, after the voter has inserted it for scanning. For extra credit, don’t perfectly fill in the ovals like a BMD normally would; instead, mimic the style that the voter has used with a pen. For double-extra-credit, do this only when the scanner detects that the voter has used a similar color pen to the ink-jet cartridge in the BMD’s printer. For triple-extra-credit, only fill in ovals in races where the voter hasn’t already marked a vote, this avoids overvotes that would draw attention to the paper ballot during an audit or recount.”
The software can be hacked to flip votes. So to insure voter integrity, each municipality needs to hand-count one state or federal race. If the total comes out the same as what the voting machine has, then send the count in. If the vote is significantly different, then we need to hand-count all of the races.
When the votes are sent in electronically, it can be intercepted and the vote counts can be changed. The hacker can send the confirmation totals back to the municipality so it looks like the totals being sent in are accurate. That is why one person from the municipality needs to check the totals at the county and state level to guarantee that what totals were sent is what was received.
Any electronic device is hackable, one way or another.
Sincerely,
JoAnn Utphall
Boyceville