Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[David Minton <dminton AT mindspring.com>]

Ed--don't get me wrong, I would like electronic voting machines, just not
these. I don't think we should dump the machines, just the company making
them (Diebold comes to mind). I think the Australians have the right idea:


http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.html

"Although a private Australian company designed the system, it was based on
specifications set by independent election officials, who posted the code on
the Internet for all to see and evaluate. What's more, it was accomplished
from concept to product in six months. It went through a trial run in a
state election in 2001."
...
"A few people wrote in to report bugs, including an academic at the
Australian National University who found the most serious problem.

'It wasn't a functional or a security issue but was a mistake nonetheless,
and one that we were glad to have flagged for us,' said Quinn."
...

In addition to the public review, the commission hired an independent
verification and validation company to audit the code, "specifically to
prevent us, as a developer, from having any election-subverting code in
there," Quinn said.

'We were concerned that it wouldn't be secure enough,' said Green, the
electoral commissioner. The audit was performed specifically to search for
security weaknesses in the system, but Green says the researchers found
none."


Since the Australian software is open-source, a group is trying to modify it
for use in the US.


http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61968,00.html

"Ritchie, a 19-year-old political science and math student at the University
of California at Davis, told the panel that he was launching the nonprofit
Open Vote Foundation, which plans to modify the Australian code to meet
California election standards and offer it free to any voting vendors that
want to implement it in their systems."
...
"Ritchie plans to modify eVACS to include a voter-verified paper audit
trail, or VVPAT, which California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley mandated
must be included with all e-voting machines by July 2006.

 The VVPAT would let voters independently verify that the machine cast their
ballot correctly before the paper receipt goes into a secure ballot box to
serve as a backup of the e-votes."

David

-- 
DesignHammer Media Group, LLC : 919.313.4588 : http://designhammer.com


On 5/7/04 9:09 AM, "Edward Wesolowski" <edwes AT idisplay.com> wrote:

>> Maybe there is still hope for the democratic process in the United States.
> David: I'm reacting to a posting from a few days back, I realize, but I
> just saw a few min. of this "U.S. Election Assistance Commission" C-SPAN 2
> coverage and it put me in mind of the topic. ...caught my eye because there
> was a Dr. Brit Williams Kennesaw State University Center for Election
> Systems speaking. I'd read a paper he wrote, "Security in the Georgia
> Voting System."
> 
> OK, I agree there are problems (...and I have had the impression of an
> arrogant Diebold! (...I hate that:-(
> 
> The issue has to do with security, but not with "The machines are bad" so
> we should dump them, these so called Direct Record Electronic voting
> machines.  Electronic voting machines are inevitable (Yikes, did I just say
> that?). Are ATM's inevitable? Are bank accounts online inevitable? Security
> and paper trail need to be dealt with, totally. I don't think we can expect
> that these electronic voting machines will just go away. Is that what
> you're saying?
> Dude, what's the issue here?
> Ed W.
> 
> P.S. DRE's have been used in parts of NC since 1997. Voters & election
> folks both seem to like them.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Minton
> Sent: 5/3/2004 10:01 AM
> To: InterNetWorkers
> Subject: [internetworkers] California Bans E-Vote Machines
> 
> 
> From Wired.com on Friday:
> 
> 
> http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
> 
> "California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley ended five months of
> speculation and announced Friday that he was decertifying all electronic
> touch-screen voting machines in the state due to security concerns and lack
> of voter confidence.
> 
> He also said that he was passing along evidence to the state's attorney
> general to bring criminal and civil charges against voting-machine-maker
> Diebold Election Systems for fraud."
> 
> Also
> 
> "Counties will not be able to purchase any new e-voting machines unless the
> machines can produce a voter-verified paper trail that voters can use to
> authenticate that their vote was recorded accurately. This pushes up a
> previous deadline Shelley put forth in December when he mandated that all
> new voting machines purchased after June 2005 would have to produce a paper
> trail."
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe there is still hope for the democratic process in the United States.
> 
> David