The voting machine virus that never was

It was one of the most closely watched election contests this month: New York's 23rd Congressional district pitted Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman against Democrat Bill Owens and Republican Dierdre Scozzafava. Pundits portrayed the race as a contest for the soul of the Republican party, with Hoffman aligned with the more conservative, mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore side of the GOP.Scozzafava eventually dropped out of the race and while Hoffman conceded (and then un-conceded) the race to Owens, his Web site now suggests that voting machines used in one of the district's counties, Hamilton county, were infected with a computer virus.VIRUS in the VOTING MACHINES: Tainted Results in NY-23Written by Nathan Barker GOUVERNEUR, NY - The computerized voting machines used by many voters in the 23rd district had a computer virus - tainting the results, not just from those machines known to have been infected, but casting doubt on the accuracy of counts retrieved from any of the machines.The copy is from an article in the small-town newspaper, the Gouverneur Times, which quotes Hamilton County Election Commissioner Cathleen Rogers, as saying that the county's machines were hit with a "virus" that was eventually fixed by the machine's manufacturer ahead of the district's Nov. 3 special election. If true, this would be a major development. Security experts have warned for years that voting machines could be infected with computer viruses, but to date it hasn't happened.Luckily, (or unluckily, depending on your point of view) it doesn't look like there was a virus in Hamilton County.The New York State Board of Elections quickly issued a statement on the Gouverneur Times's report, blasting it as "full of inaccurate information." The story "unfortunately quoted a single word from a commissioner who mischaracterized the issue in question."I tried to reach Cathleen Rogers on Monday, but didn't hear back from her or from the Hamilton County Board of Elections. The paper's rebuttal (Hey, she said it!) to this statement can be found here. The State Board did say there was a bug with the machines, however. Apparently they would freeze up when voters were allowed to choose more than one candidate in any given race. On election day, some of the scanners froze, and were then taken out of commission.Voting machine expert Joseph Hall is satisfied with the Board's explanation. "As far as we can tell, it's not a virus," he said. Rogers simply "misspoke, as far as we can tell," said Hall, a research associate with Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy. Hall, like many e-voting experts, believes that it's possible for a virus to be placed on an e-voting machine, so if there were anything to this story, he'd be all over it.

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