Oxford News

OXFORD — The Ohio secretary of state's office has made several recommendations to local elections boards after a study revealed an alarming number of vulnerabilities in three state voting systems.

Butler County's voting system, which uses Direct Recording Electronic Equipment, has been identified as one of the most vulnerable systems, an informations security expert said Tuesday night, Feb. 19, at Miami University during the first of a series of statewide forums on the issue.

"The increasing instability of Ohio's voting systems is a cause of growing concern," said Patrick McDaniel, professor at Penn State University who headed the study.

The forums are geared toward educating the public about the Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's recommendations and the revelations of the study, called the Evaluation and Validation of Election-Related Equipment Standards & Testing, otherwise known as EVEREST.

"Some of the best hackers in the world" were able to identify a number of security failures with Ohio's voting systems, sometimes hacking into the systems in a matter of hours, said McDaniel.

Brunner has recommended doing away with the system because of the study's findings.

Optical scan machines will be an option for voters in the March 4 election if they request to use them, said Chandra Yungbluth, a regional liaison from the secretary of state's office who works closely with the Butler County Board of Elections.

Yungbluth said the changes shouldn't impact the timeliness of voting results of the March primary, which is also when the secretary of state's office wants to try out an auditing procedure that would complement the counting of unofficial and official results.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2122 or rwilson@coxohio.com.