Showing the gaps in the armor of electronic systems

PRINCETON, N.J. - Paperless, electronic voting is fast going out of style, and one reason might be the bombshell lobbed by Princeton University professor Edward Felten.

Just months before the 2006 November midterm elections, Felten and two graduate students released a report and demonstration video on how easily they managed to tamper with a commonly used electronic voting machine. He said one of his graduate students picked the lock in 10 seconds and installed malicious software in less than a minute.

"There wasn't a lot of good information on how e-voting machines work," Felten said. "There were a lot of suggestions there were problems. And the companies were making some pretty outlandish claims."

Nearly a year later, a growing number of states, including New Jersey, are taking a security step suggested by Felten and other experts: states are requiring a paper record of every vote cast - whether it's a paper receipt spit out by a push-button electronic machine, or an optical scan machine that uses paper ballots in the first place.

"Both sides work better if they have access to the wisdom and knowledge of the other side," he said. "I've tried to inject the good ideas of one side into the other side."

Demonstrating the foibles of commonly used technology is a passion for Felten, 44.

The soft-spoken researcher first became fascinated with computer technology while growing up in Madison, Wis., when his father bought a then cutting-edge Apple II.

But it wasn't until years later that Felten decided he wanted to go beyond the mere study of computers and insert himself into debates about how technology affects public policy.

So when the U.S. Justice Department asked him to testify in one of the largest antitrust cases in recent decades, he was right there.

Federal prosecutors called Felten as an expert witness in the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust suit against Microsoft in the late 1990s, in which the company was accused of using its domination of computer operating systems to monopolize the Internet browser market.

When Felten released his voting-machine study last year, it was blasted by Texas-based Diebold Election Systems, the maker of the machine that was tested. The company said Felten ignored newer software and security measures meant to prevent such hacking.

Many government officials don't entirely buy the idea that electronic voting is secure.

About half of the 50 states now have laws requiring paper trails of votes, and the number continues to grow, according to Donetta Davidson, chairwoman of the federal Election Assistance Commission.

Felten's study was but one of many factors affecting the trend, Davidson said, but undoubtedly served as a reminder to election officials about voting machine security.