Diebold AccuVote-TS voting in Princetons Voting Studies Lab

Ariel J. Feldman, J. Alex Halderman, and Edward W. Felten have completed a security study using an Actual Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine. The study will no doubt provide some good information for people, but what's really eye-catching is the video they prepared showing how you can install software in under a minute that not only steal votes, but is also viral so that it spreads from machine to machine as workers update software.

These kinds of results make one wonder how any elections official can remain sanguine about the security of elections conducted on DRE equipment in the absence of concerted efforts to create processes and policy that not only take results such as this into account but also are continually updated to reflect emerging threats.

The move to DRE voting equipment has opened a Pandora's box of security issues that elections officials have never had to deal with before. If they insist on using DRE equipment, for whatever reason, they have to also be willing to engage in the security threat assessment and mitigation exercises that come with that equipment.