The Security Mentor

One of the safeguards that activists and security professionals want to see on electronic voting machines is a paper trail that the voter can see and verify before it gets stored. But you need to look at the details of how it gets implemented.

You see, in Ohio and probably some other places, the poll workers keep records of who's voted in order as they come in. The paper trail from machines by Election Systems and Software has time stamps on the records. Put those together and unless a lot of people come in at the same time, it's a pretty good guess that the Nth person to come in cast the Nth vote. It's not provable, but it's evidence enough to satisfy an abusive spouse, a vote buyer, or almost anyone else with an interest in undoing the secrecy of a secret ballot. The poll records and the paper trail are both public records in Ohio.

This is one more problem you should be on the alert for if your jurisdiction tries electronic voting. Notice, too, how it's a problem that only shows up if you put two features of the voting system together. Problems like that are hard to spot, which is why professional security people are so important to assessing a voting system.