Peach Tree Times

Georgia got new voting machines in 2002, but security experts believe the machines were lacking the security needed for elections.

Merrill Morris wrote in a 2003 article that the computerized voting system had many flaws and security leaks. 

Dan Wallach, a Rice University professor who participated along with three other computer scientists from Johns Hopkins University, in a study of the voting system concluded that computerized voting is risky. 

“Paperless voting systems are far too risky, too vulnerable,” Wallach said in Morris’ article.

Wallach said that he questioned how people would know if things were fine or not during an election using computerized voting machines.

"When people say everything worked fine in the last election," Wallach said in the article, "I ask them, how on earth do you know?"

Wallach spoke at an Atlanta symposium by the Internet and Public Policy Project of Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy in 2003, regarding electronic voting systems. 

Others who also spoke at the symposium were Hans Klein, the director of the Internet and Public Policy Project, and Doug Jones, a University of Iowa computer science professor who also served on the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems.

Klein said that both representatives for Diebold, who makes Georgia’s voting machines, as well as the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, had been invited to speak regarding the issues, but neither responded to the requests.

Jones noted that there was no way to ask for hand recounts when votes were done on the computerized systems. Jones, who was a member of Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines beginning in 1994, noted that security issues surrounding computerized voting needed to be made known so that the public could be aware of the process.

"The first rule of democracy is that you never trust anybody," Jones said in the article.