September 20, 2003
Is Your Vote Being Counted?
The 9th Circuit Court is concerned about punch card voting machines. Perhaps, though, they should be more concerned about the electonic voting machines which in their current incarnation have an even greater risk of disenfranchising voters.
EFF has a lot to say on this issue and is particularly harsh on the normally staid IEEE which has been charged with developing voting machine standards. However, the work they have done to day appears to be design oriented rather then performance oriented. The EFF reports that:
Members of the security community report that the current standard is flawed. P1583 is largely a design standard, describing how to configure current electronic voting machines, instead of a performance standard setting benchmarks and processes for testing the security, reliability, accessibility, and accuracy of these machines.Of course, if you don't vote or don't care about the results matching what the voters wanted then go back to sleep.
Charles Stross lists three minimal requirements for an electronic voting system:
1) It must print a paper record of the vote cast, which the voter must be able to see, and which must be retained, and which can be reconciled with the electronic record of the vote.Number 2 needs a little tuning up to say something like 3rd party auditors must verify that the software accurately tallies the vote as entered by the voter. Make sure your local systems adhere to these. Posted by Steve on September 20, 20032) The software used must be open to third-party auditors, to the extent that it can be verified and if necessarily formally proven to be above suspicion. (Translation: only open source need apply.)
3) The hardware used must be open to third-party auditors, preferably conform verifiably to off-the-shelf standards, and may be challenged and replaced by the election commission with equivalent off-the-shelf equipment (to ensure that no sneaky hardware back doors are installed).
