"California e-voting machines have more holes than Swiss cheese"

Photo Credit: Sacramento Bee

That was the headline posted by the Register, a British publication that focuses on the IT industry. Leave it to the foreign news media to put it bluntly. A study was completed by the Computer Security Laboratory at the University of California, Davis. Officials from the university testified before California Secretary of State Debra Bowen who is said to be considering decertifying the machines for the next election.

Critics of the study contend that the laboratory conditions under which the machines were tested were unrealistic and not subject to other security measures which would have protected the machines.

• Here's an interview on NPR Science Friday that discussed the issues.
• The university published this summary of the research.
• This is an article in the Sacramento Bee describes the criticism of the report. Here is a blog entry by Avi Ruben, a computer scientist not involved in the report but who has followed the voting machine controversy closely as a computer scientist. He contends that flaws in system and software design are flaws, regardless of how they are discovered.