Lawsuit: Ohio voting machines could alter votes

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

AP Legal Affairs Writer

COLUMBUS — An election-eve law­suit filed Mon­day alleges that soft­ware in some Ohio vot­ing machines makes the machines vul­ner­a­ble to hav­ing votes altered after they are cast.

The fed­eral law­suit involv­ing machines made by Omaha, Neb.-based Elec­tion Sys­tems and Soft­ware alleges that soft­ware on the machines could allow vote manip­u­la­tion by non-election board officials.

A “back door” in ES&S soft­ware and hard­ware cre­ates “an immi­nent risk” that indi­vid­u­als not super­vised by elec­tions boards could “alter the record­ing and tab­u­la­tion of votes cast by Ohio vot­ers in the Gen­eral Elec­tion,” accord­ing to the law­suit filed on behalf of Bob Fitrakis, a long­time Ohio elec­tions activist.

The law­suit asks a judge to order Ohio’s elec­tions chief Jon Husted not to use the machines Tues­day and to break state con­tracts with ES&S for vot­ing machines to be used this year.

The machines are in Ohio’s 25 most pop­u­lous coun­ties, said Colum­bus attor­ney Cliff Arnebeck, who filed the lawsuit.

A hear­ing was sched­uled for Tues­day morning.

Mes­sages were left with ES&S and Husted’s office seek­ing comment.

The law­suit was the sec­ond last-minute com­plaint filed over vot­ing in bat­tle­ground Ohio. A sec­ond fed­eral judge is con­sid­er­ing union claims that Husted’s office improp­erly changed rules for not­ing the type of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion used on pro­vi­sional ballots.

The com­plaint says Husted’s order could lead to pro­vi­sional bal­lots being unnec­es­sar­ily dis­qual­i­fied. Husted’s office says the form in ques­tion has already been used twice this year.

Posted by AP News on Nov 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.