Identity Theft 911's research details a host of major problems in Cleveland's May primary, including the following: many voting machines were initially misplaced, making them vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves; workers were unable to operate the machines properly; other glitches caused the official vote count to be delayed an entire week. Also, after the voting ended, bags of memory cards, each containing thousands of votes and personal information, were sent from polling places to elections headquarters, unescorted by anyone from the elections bureau -- an egregious breach of security.
Experts are warning that the November election in Ohio may see a repeat of the voting problems that occurred in the May primary. A review board deemed it "an across-the-board failure to plan and manage the first countywide endeavor in electronic voting."
According to Steven Christenson, president of Identity Theft 911, "Voting and identity are closely related, as verification of the latter ensures the legitimacy of the former. What critics of electronic voting have overlooked from the beginning is the increased risk of identity theft posed by these voting systems. Identity verification is fundamental to legitimate elections, but in this case, major databases of sensitive personal information have been introduced into a system that is obviously flawed."
