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New York has been notorious for vote fraud. In the 1920's Boss Tweed, speaking before the Board of Aldermen, stated that he had told his Tammany Hall men to, "count the ballots in bulk, or without counting them announce the result in bulk, or change from one to the other." [Dugger, pg. 46] Furthermore, Tweed stated, "...the ballots made no result; the counters made the result....I don't think there was ever a fair or honest election in the City of New York." [Dugger, pg. 46] Today, New York serves as a political hot bed for the electronic voting issue. They have been going through a ten year ordeal of switching to computerized vote-tallying. From the onset," the intricate process....was specifically contrived to guard against corruption." [Roberts] It was a hefty investment of $69 million for 7,000 machines. [Sullivan] They not only wanted the machines to guard against fraud, but the political process in acquiring the machines to be free from corruption. Yet, their attempts on both fronts have had their skeptics, failures, and corruption.
On a political level the acquisition process was completely tainted. Many of the vote-tallying machine bidders had political representatives. There was Mr. Clifford Wilson, an executive for the R.S. Shoup Company. He was a former Queens assemblyman, and served as counsel to the State Senate Democrats. In 1987 he was implicated in a legislative-payroll-padding scandal. Lawrence Mandelker was also a Shoup representative, and also Mayor Koch's campaign treasurer. Another bidder was represented by Sid Davidoff a former city official, and James Capoligo a former campaign manager and General Services Commissioner for Mr. Koch. [Roberts] Another representative, Ed Sadowsky, is responsible for bringing corruption in the bidding war to light.
Ed Sadowsky represented the Sequoia Pacific Corporation. He also sat on the Board of Education and was a former City Councilman from Queens. His connection was with Tony Sadowski ( no relation ). Tony Sadowski was a Queens Democratic district leader and sat on the 10-member Elections Board. He represented a swing vote in the bidding war. Tony Sadowski suggested to Ed Sadowsky that for an "unspecified consideration ....he might be persuaded to endorse Sequoia's bid." [Roberts] Ed Sadowsky reported it, but in further conversations could not get Tony to speak about the solicitation. Tony had gotten wind of other inquiries into his actions.
Corruption and payoffs seem to permeate every part of politics. When politics dominate the initial step in computerizing vote-counting, the entire system of computerized-voting is circumspect. One politician, in commenting on the actions of Tony Sadowski, stated, "What you have is a very political process, 10 individuals who are basically very political going to make a decision about a political voting machine." [Roberts] If the bribe went through with no one's knowledge then one would ask what was Sequoia's motive; profit or power? The vote-tallying company has the real power in any election since they are the one's that not only provide the machines but they also write the source code for specific elections. Furthermore, the source code is proprietary knowledge and does not have to be divulged to the community. There are numerous weak points in using computers in elections and all the weak points start with people.
Deliotte & Touche was awarded the contract to develop and maintain the central programming system. They assured the city and populace that "it is possible" to detect hidden instructions in the source code. They also promised that through tests, certain analyses and inspections of the source code one could produce an "audit trail" of the computers actions. An evaluation by SRI International uncovered vulnerablities in the system. SRI's role was to serve as a guide to the city's acquisition of computerized voting systems. It evaluated Deliotte & Touche's report and contradicted Deliotte's safety comments. Unfortunately, the report was kept from the press and public, by the city's election bureaucrats, for six months. The report described Deloitte & Touche's evaluation as,
"inadequate", "often nonconstructive", "in places, unprofessional", and marred by omissions, a number of them evidently serious; it refers to Deloitte's assurances as "really not true," misleading, "both fatuous and incorrect" and glib. Deloitte says documentation of computer code is not a security issue; SRI replies, "Incomplete documentation can easily mask horrendous security flaws." At another point SRI says, "With digital technology, essentially nothing is impossible when it comes to fraudulent misuse."
[Dugger, New York Times]
The revelations about the poor security computerized vote-tallying systems provided comes at a poor time. New York needs a new system. The old mechanical lever machines they use are breaking down. Replacements are no longer manufactured, forcing the city to cannibalize some of the machines to fix others. This is a fundamental problem with technology: Once a new, supposedly more advanced and complex technology evolves, it usually weeds the old technology out of the market. Only after the old technology is gone do we discover the weak points of the new technology. New York really has no choice. It must attempt to securitize the new system as best as possible. Yet, the complexity and centralization of the new system creates a plethora of weak points.
The problem of vote-tallying fraud is compounded by the fact that legal conviction of fraud is extremely difficult. Many vote-tallying problems can be blamed on computer misprogramming, failure, or accidental use. Furthermore, there generally is no record of election officials' interaction with the vote-tallying machines. These problems contribute to the difficulty in convicting in cases such as the one in Charleston, West Virginia.