David Dill Newsletter update on auditable paper trail voting meetings

[papau]

Excerpts from the Newsletter:

Voter Verifiable workshop -Denver -July 28 and 29....There were presentations on computer security issues with touch screen machines, including an a discussion by computer science Prof. Douglas Jones of the University of Iowa of a recently published report of major security holes in Diebold's touch screen machines. Prof. Jones, who is an election machine examiner for the State of Iowa, called for the de-certification of Diebold's equipment. There were also presentations of high-tech schemes for voter verification, including methods using sophisticated cryptography. VoteHere CEO Jim Adler, Dr. David Chaum of SureVote, and Dr. Josh Beneloh of Microsoft discussed such schemes. There were also many presentations by vendors with currently available equipment for voter verification, such as touch screen machines that produce a printed ballot for voter inspection, including AccuPoll, Avante, ES&S, Nedap, Populex, and Wintergreen Research. One unique idea, from Vogue Election Products, was a device for reading and writing optical scan ballots to provide access for voters with disabilities and non-English speakers.

Some participants were concerned about many of the solutions that were described. "Lots of things have to work right for a fair and accurate election," said Ted Selker, a Professor at MIT and a member of the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project, which was initiated to prevent a recurrence of the problems that threatened the 2000 U. S. Presidential election. "My concern if separate paper has to be verified is that it will complicate the voting process for people and add expense to the system. However, it is crucial that we monitor and improve the audit trail and verification of votes."

Talks on the second day were interrupted briefly by a demonstration lead by American Association of People with Disabilities VP and co-chair of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Election Reform Task Force, Jim Dickson, who stated that additional requirements on elections could delay the purchase of accesssible electronic voting machines. A brief debate of this issue was held at the end of the workshop. All participants agreed that the needs of voters with disabilities must be considered with any new audit trail requirements. <snip>

...Illinois had recently passed a law requiring a voter verifiable paper trail on all election equipment. I don't even know when this passed! This is why we need people to help fill in our state pages.


VoteHere announced that they were releasing a complete description
of their system to the public to promote open review of the security of the system. Since I want to encourage this type of behavior, I have offered to make the information available on verifiedvoting.org ...I'm told the material will be available in another week...Sequoia Systems has announced that they will partner with VoteHere to provide electronic ballot verification to customers who want it.

Diebold has churned out propaganda explaining why there isn't really a problem (see http://www.diebold.com). Rebuttals have been written (http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldftp.html#rebuttals) by Doug Jones and the original authors (see http://avirubin.com/vote/). The most important point of the original paper is to make it perfectly clear that there are no effective security requirements for electronic voting machines. Diebold's code obviously contains major security blunders (i.e., dumb mistakes) which indicate that the system designers, programmers, regulators, and testing authorities don't know, or perhaps care, about the basics of computer security. These are the same regulations and inspection processes that apply to all other voting equipment. There is no reason to believe that other equipment is better.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which produced a policy analysis a few weeks ago opposing a voter verifiable paper trail, has released a "fact sheet" which ..consider very balanced and reasonable...excerpts ....Voting Machine Security: The modern voting machines that are being phased in under HAVA are far easier to use, more accessible for people with disabilities and language minorities, and less prone to ballot errors than older machines. But like any technology, they are not immune to malfunctions or security threats. States should use systems that allow voters to verify that their ballots were cast as intended.

[4dog]

1. The most important issue for people who believe in democracy

is: do the counted votes really represent the votes that were cast?