State to Escrow Electronic Vote Software to Prevent Fraud

A new law requires California counties to place their vote-counting computer programs in escrow so they can be checked by independent experts in case of disputed results.

The law, which will take effect Jan. 1, is a partial response to increasing criticism that electronic vote tabulation sometimes is inaccurate and is vulnerable to tampering because of lax security.

“It’s an additional security measure,” said Deborah Seiler, assistant to Secretary of State March Fong Eu. “I think it goes a long way to counter the allegations that someone could fraudulently alter an election result.”

Duties Described

The legislation was authored by Assemblyman Richard Mountjoy (R-Monrovia) and signed into law last month by Gov. George Deukmejian. It calls for an exact copy of the “source code,” the heart of the vote-counting computer software, to be placed in an “escrow facility” to be approved by the secretary of state. In case of a dispute, the escrowed copy would be compared to the program that was run on election night to see if there is evidence of tampering.

The secretary of state also is required to determine what material should be placed in escrow, what kind of escrow facilities should be used and under what circumstances the source codes should be made accessible to investigators.

In the 1988 presidential election, 97% of the California vote was counted on some kind of computerized tally system. The remaining 3% was counted by lever machines, most of which are in San Mateo County.

Although California has reported no major snafus or rigged elections, a series of flawed elections in other states in recent years has led to increased criticism of electronic vote counting, especially by computer security experts, and has caused officials involved in national elections to review their procedures.

One of the proposals that has emerged from this review is to place the crucial “source codes” in escrow so they can be examined later, should there be a challenge. This also allows election officials access to the codes should the companies that produce the software go out of business or stop selling that particular product, as has happened in several states.

Many election officials are concerned because “once the software is in place, there are all kinds of ways to manipulate it and nobody can get at it,” said Ernest R. Hawkins, Sacramento County’s registrar of voters. “It was too secret, too difficult to get to, even in a challenged situation.”

Easier to Manipulate

Manufacturers of computerized vote-counting equipment have been reluctant to part with their software because they feared the valuable codes would be stolen. Some still feel that way.

“The problem with escrow is that it makes it easier for someone who wants to manipulate an election to get their hands on the source code,” said Tom Diebold, president of DFM Associates, an Irvine firm that produces vote-counting software for 16 California counties. But, Diebold added, “if it’s the law, obviously we’ll go along with it.”

A differing opinion came from Lester M. Jaspovice, vice president and corporate counsel for Sequoia Pacific Systems, which also has many California counties as customers.

“My company doesn’t like it but, as an attorney, I think it’s a good idea,” Jaspovice said. “It provides a virgin copy of the code that the court can call on in case of a dispute.”

However, Howard Jay Strauss, a Princeton University computer scientist and a member of Election Watch, questioned the usefulness of escrow laws like California’s.

If an election result is disputed and the source code placed in escrow turns out to be different from the one used to count the votes, “then you know something’s wrong,” Strauss said. “But if they’re the same, it doesn’t tell you anything because they could both contain the same mistakes.”

Strauss also doubted that the law would protect against a company going out of business or losing its top scientific talent.

“The idea is that these escrow facilities will have technical people who can read this stuff,” Strauss said, referring to the source codes, “but some of it is so badly written that, even after months of work, you wouldn’t know what it was all about.”

Drew Deer, vice president of Data Securities International, a San Francisco company that is one of the few computer software escrow firms in the country, said Strauss has a valid point.

“If the code has a bug in it, it will show up on both the original and the copy,” Deer said, “but that’s good because you at least know it’s a technical problem and nobody has been tampering.”

The initial deposit fee for a vote-counting source code might be about $1,500, Deer said, plus $1,000 a year after that. If a result is challenged, and a detailed verification process is carried out, the cost could be as much as $30,000.

Vendors are expected to pay the initial costs, then presumably increase the leasing fees charged for the vote-counting systems. Determination of further payments has not been made.

Major Flaw Untouched

Several critics said the new law does nothing to correct what they consider to be the major flaw in computerized elections, in California and elsewhere--the presence of poorly trained, underpaid election workers who do not understand the computerized equipment they are using to count votes.

“Elections are still the stepchild of government,” said Hawkins, the Sacramento County registrar of voters. “The office is usually in the basement of the county courthouse. The staff is mainly clerical workers, there aren’t enough of them and they’re poorly paid. And nobody pays any attention between elections.”

California’s new law coincides with efforts by the National Clearinghouse for Election Administration, an arm of the Federal Election Commission, to produce voluntary state standards for computerized elections.

The federal standards, which were published in the Federal Register last week, also call for putting source codes in escrow. So far, Texas, New York and a few other states have laws similar to California’s.