Nassau County seeks to block use of e-voting systems in upcoming primary

New York State's new electronic voting machines can be tampered with by anyone with five minutes of access, a screwdriver and a flash drive, Nassau County Attorney John Ciampoli argued in a Court of Appeals hearing, Courthouse News Service reports. (Note: Shortly after publication, the Courthouse News Service website seemed to be down. Please try the link again later if you have difficulty reaching the site.)

Nassau County's Republican and Democratic commissioners agree that they don't want the new ES&S DS-200 voting machines, as mandated by the state to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act, the story notes. They've filed suit to block implementation of the state law that implements HAVA and requires use of new touchscreen systems instead of the lever machines that had been in use in the state for decades.

New York's primary election is less than two weeks away, on Sept. 14.

Judge Dennis Jacobs said it appears that the new systems are "more prone to fraud on a mass scale than a lever machine," while the Justice Department attorney defending the law was quoted as saying he didn't know how susceptible the new systems might be to fraud.

It appears that the suit will be decided on legal issues (i.e. who has jurisdiction to decide what machines should be used) and not whether the new systems are secure. Which isn't very comforting for the millions of voters going to the polls the week after next.

Sharon Machlis is online managing editor at Computerworld. Her e-mail address is smachlis@computerworld.com. You can follow her on Twitter @sharon000, on Facebook or by subscribing to her RSS feeds:
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