ELECTION SOFTWARE DEFENDED COUNTY OFFICIAL DOWNPLAYS ANY FRAUD RISK.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack says she is confident that software in touch-screen voting machines being used at a few polling places in the Oct. 7 recall election isn't prone to fraud or abuse.

``The software has been rigorously tested and certified by both the state and federal government,'' McCormack said.

McCormack's remarks came after a recent report by computer science professors at Johns Hopkins and Rice universities who said the software being installed in the county and much of the nation is prone to tampering and fraud and poses a grave danger to democratic elections.

Diebold Election Systems officials said the software that the professors analyzed on an Internet site was an older version and flaws have been eliminated in a new version.

On Friday, Diebold software spokesman Michael Jacobsen said parts of the source code the professors analyzed may have been used in touch-screen voting machines in the November 2002 election in several states and counties in California.

``The code the group tested was an old code and as the software changes from version to version, most of the code gets replaced through updates and attrition,'' Jacobsen said.

David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University, said Diebold officials, the National Association of Secretaries of State and state and local officials offered assurance there are no problems with the machines, but he remains skeptical.

``It's obvious to many computer scientists that there are very serious problems. We know that if you have an insider, like a programmer at the voting machine company, they can easily insert malicious code that cannot be detected by inspecting the program or testing it.''

McCormack said the professors' concerns about voters being able to counterfeit ``smart cards'' and cast multiple votes on the touch-screen machines is theoretical, while in a real ``controlled polling place'' election workers are signing in voters and watching them.

``It's not as if someone wouldn't notice someone sticking a bunch of cards into the machine,'' McCormack said.

``We are very concerned about computer security, and from the very beginning we made sure safeguards were in place,'' McCormack said. ``In Los Angeles County, the largest county in the United States, we wouldn't jeopardize an election (by not) making sure we had appropriate security safeguards in place.''

Although county officials have already purchased nearly 200 Diebold machines and plan to offer touch-screen voting at 12 sites for the Oct. 7 recall election, there will be a call for competitive bids before officials spend $100 million on new voting machines for widespread use in the November 2005 election.

Sites where touch-screen machines will be used in the recall election include the Mid-Valley Regional Library in North Hills, Beverly Hills City Hall and the county Fire Training Center in Lancaster.

After McCormack admitted that she has been good friends with a Sacramento-based Diebold official, Deborah Seiler, critics questioned McCormack's objectivity in the process of selecting a vendor.

McCormack said she and Seiler have been friends for more than 15 years - since the time when Seiler was chief of the election division at the Secretary of State's Office.

``One time we went off to a bed-and-breakfast in Monterey with our husbands,'' McCormack said, adding that Diebold didn't pay for the trip.

``We are going out to bid in January for touch-screen systems to start in 2005. We'll get the bids in, do an evaluation and move to a new system - and it's wide open to any vendor. So far, Diebold is the only vendor that has come in here that can have seven languages on one touch-screen.''

Dill said McCormack isn't the only election official in the state who has relationships with vendors.

``I can see there is an awfully cozy relationship between a lot of machine vendors and election officials, and that concerns me deeply,'' Dill said. ``Conny has the option to hear from independent experts on computer security who have no financial stake with vendors and who don't go to bed-and-breakfasts with an executive from a voting machine company.

``Or (county officials) can get advice from people at the vendor companies who obviously have a financial motivation and are not going to be objective.''

Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit organization calling for responsible use of technology in the democratic process, said the ``revolving door in the elections industry turns so fast it's dizzying.''

``And the fact that the voting equipment vendors recruit employees who previously served as election officials benefits those companies through the relationships their employees previously had in their official capacity.''

Troy Anderson, [phone]

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com