Insurance for Electronic Votes

[phoebe]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/23/opinion/23fri1.html

This November, millions of voters will use electronic voting machines of questionable reliability. The election is by now too near for the sort of major overhaul that electronic voting requires. But there is still time for states and localities to protect the integrity of the voting and build public confidence in the results. The public should insist that election officials put these protections in place right away.

There has been extensive documentation of the problems with electronic voting. Several studies have found that it is vulnerable to vote theft and to inadvertent errors that can alter the outcome of an election. These inherent flaws are made worse by the reckless, and possibly illegal, actions of voting machine companies. This spring, California banned 14,000 Diebold voting machines because of allegations of "fraudulent actions" by the manufacturer.

In a well-run election system, electronic voting machines costing millions of dollars would not have been purchased before there were adequate standards for ensuring that they work properly. But given that nearly one-third of voters may be voting electronically this fall, it is fortunate that a number of private groups - including the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School and the Caltech/M.I.T. Voting Technology Project - have stepped forward with ideas for how election officials can minimize the risks. Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state and a pioneer in the field, has also issued useful directives, many of which are on his official Web site.


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[struggle4progress]

1. Staff Report on the Investigation of Diebold Election Systems Inc

April 20, 2004
Presented to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley
and the Voting Systems and Procedures Panel
<snip>
In sum, Diebold:
1. marketed and sold the TSx system before it was fully functional, and before it was federally qualified;
2. misrepresented the status of the TSx system in federal testing in order to obtain state certification;
3. failed to obtain federal qualification of the TSx system despite assurances that it would;
4. failed even to pursue testing of the firmware installed on its TSx machines in California until only weeks before the election, choosing instead to pursue testing of newer firmware that was even further behind in the ITA testing process and that, in some cases, required the use of other software that also was not approved in California;
5. installed uncertified software on election machines in 17 counties;
6. sought last-minute certification of allegedly essential hardware, software and firmware that had not completed federal testing; and
7. in doing so, jeopardized the conduct of the March Primary.
<snip>
http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/touchscreen.htm