Unfortunately, this isn’t a new topic. I’ve been reading a paper from 1987 that talks about the problem in terms of punch cards. The paper begins by considering two anecdotes where the computer tally was problematic. In one case, the wrong program was used, in another case, the program was incorrect.
In both cases, the problem was found and corrected on a human instigated audit.
The paper cites a series of articles from 1985 published in the New York Times, where computer experts report that a “computer program widely used for vote tallying was vulnerable to tampering”.
I tracked down the New York Times article and found this interesting quote:
In a 1981 report to Congress on the need to develop national voting standards, the Federal Election Comision reported that the commercial concerns selling voting equipment to local jurisdictions have “paid little attention to data quality assessment features”.
Burnham, David. “Computerized systems for voting seen as vulnerable to tampering.” The New York Times (July 29, 1985) 1 (1985).
The article is nearly 35 years old, but we’re still grappling with similar problems.
DTRAP has a special issue planned on Election Security. We welcome your submissions on this important topic.