Just prior to the midterm elections, however, the new electronic voting system in Washington, D.C. was hacked.
As a program security trial, the D.C. Board of Elections & Ethics reportedly encouraged outside parties to hack and find flaws in its new online balloting system. A group of University of Michigan students then hacked into the site and commanded it to play the University of Michigan fight song upon casting a vote.
This is not the first time SCYTL’S systems have been called into question. Voter Action, an advocacy group that seeks elections integrity in the U.S., sent a lengthy complaint to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in April 2010 charging that the integration of SCYTL systems “raises national security concerns.”
“Foreign governments may also seek to undermine the national security interests of the United States, either directly or through other organizations,” Voter Action charged. The document notes that SCYTL was founded in 2001 as a spin-off from a research group at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, which was partially funded by the Spanish government’s Ministry of Science and Technology. SCYTL’s headquarters are in Barcelona with offices in Washington, D.C., Singapore, Bratislava and Athens.
The company provides voter services worldwide, including in France, Norway, Spain, India, the United Arab Emirates, Austria, Australia, Britain, Mexico, Switzerland, Philippines and Finland.
Project Vote noted that the Florida Department of State commissioned a review of SCYTL’s remote voting software and concluded, in part, that the system may be subject to attacks that could compromise the integrity of votes cast.
Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York’s 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 7-9 p.m. His website is KleinOnline.com.