Diebold Admits ATMs Are More Robust Than Voting Machines

An anonymous reader points out a story in the Huffington Post about the status of funding for election voting systems. It contains an interesting section in which Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier (formerly Diebold) acknowledged that less money is spent making an electronic voting machine than on a typical ATM. The ironically named Riggall also notes that security could indeed be improved, but at a higher price than most election administrators would care to pay. Also quoted in the article is Ed Felten, who has recently found some inconsistencies in New Jersey voting machines. From the Post: "'An ATM is significantly a more expensive device than a voting terminal...' said Riggall. 'Were you to develop something that was as robust as an ATM, both in terms of the physical engineering of it and all aspects, clearly that would be something that the average jurisdiction cannot afford.' Perhaps cost has something to do with the fact that a couple of years ago, every single Diebold AccuVote TS could be opened with a standard key also used for some cabinets and mini-bars and available for purchase over the Internet."

Comments

Re:ATM's are also more secure

[skeletor935]

I don't think they need to be as physically secure, there's always a voting official in the room in plain sight and several other people working there. It doesn't need to be built like an ATM that will be randomly placed in dark alleys.

Re:ATM's are also more secure

[JaredOfEuropa]

I don't think they need to be as physically secure, there's always a voting official in the room in plain sight and several other people working there. It doesn't need to be built like an ATM that will be randomly placed in dark alleys.

Not just that; they also do not have to be completely tamper-proof (though the more secure the better, obviously). The point is that we shouldn't labour under the illusion that these machines can be made completely tamper-proof, which is what the manufacturers and politicians are driving at. Rather, we need a reliably way to detect tampering and verify the voting results in case we suspect some tampering has occurred. More importantly, verification must be possible by non-experts, which means that voters can see for themselves that votes are tallied correctly rather than take some experts word for it.

A voting machine that prints off a paper ballot which the voter deposits in a lockbox still seems the best option to achieve this.