Ready or Not, Electronic Voting Goes National
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Whether or not the machines are ready for the election - or the electorate ready for the machines - there is no turning back.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recommended that the U.S. government require touch-screen electronic voting machines to include independent audit technology, such as printouts. "The lack of an independent audit capability in systems is one of the main reasons behind continued questions about voting system security and diminished public confidence in elections," says a NIST paper released this month. "In practical terms the software-dependent approach cannot be made secure or highly reliable." The Technical Guidelines Development Committee of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) is scheduled to review the NIST's recommendation that direct record electronic (DRE) machines include voter-verified paper trails or other auditing mechanisms at a meeting Monday and Tuesday. DREs do not assure that voting records are accurate, and 15 states using the e-voting machines do not use independent audit mechanisms statewide, the NIST paper says. "Trust in an election outcome relies heavily upon trusting the correctness of the DRE's software and upon trusting that the DRE software has not been replaced or tampered with," the paper says. "Simply put, the DRE architecture's inability to provide for independent audits of its electronic records makes it a poor choice for an environment in which detecting errors and fraud is important." A spokesman for the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), representing e-voting machine vendors, didn't immediately return a message seeking comment on the NIST recommendations. The ITAA has argued that paper trail ballots may simply print out the same results stored on the DREs. Paper trail systems can be costly to add on to DREs, and printer breakdowns can cause problems during elections, the ITAA has said. One e-voting critic praised the report. "That's really good news," said Barbara Burt, director of the election reform program at Common Cause, one of several groups calling for e-voting paper trails. "It looks like it's going to help us finally get rid of the paperless DREs." NIST's recommendations come after scattered reports of problems with DREs in the Nov. 7 U.S. elections. In Florida's 13th congressional district, Democratic candidate Christine Jennings has filed a lawsuit asking for a revote after 18,000 voters failed to cast a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives race. Two recounts found Republican Vern Buchanan the winner of the race, but Sarasota County did not require the Elections System and Software (ES&S) e-voting machines to include paper printouts to back up the electronic vote. While e-voting supporters say the machines make it hard to undervote, Sarasota County voters cast about 16,000 more votes in the Florida governor's race and in the Florida Senate race than were recorded in the House race. About 4,000 more people cast ballots for the county's Southern District Hospital Board than were recorded in the House race. Thirty-five states either mandate voter-verified paper-trail systems or use them statewide without a mandate, according to the NIST report. But 10 states use paper-trail ballots on a county-by-county basis, and five states, including Maryland, Georgia and Louisiana, use DREs statewide without paper- trail ballots. The NIST paper published this month recommends states use "software-independent" voting systems, using either paper-trail ballots or cryptographic audit systems instead of relying on the "correctness of the software" for election results. The paper suggests that the EAC require audit mechanisms in e-voting machines, and recommends that federal election officials stop certifying e-voting machines without independent audit systems after 2009 or 2010.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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(InfoWorld) - With hotly contested nationwide elections just weeks away, several computer experts Thursday questioned the reliability and security of e-voting systems during a congressional committee hearing. Access doors of thousands of Diebold AcuVote-TS touch-screen systems can all be opened with the same key -- a type commonly used for office furniture, jukeboxes and hotel minibars, Princeton University computer science professor Edward Felten told the committee. That door protects the removable memory card that stores votes. "Though some claim that election procedures will prevent the kinds of problems we identified, the rigid procedures described in vendor manuals are often ignored in practice," said Felten, co-author of a study that was highly critical of Diebold Election Systems' AccuVote TS. Also today, the Committee on House Administration took no action on legislation proposed by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) aimed at remedying e-voting vulnerabilities. The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR 550), introduced last February, now has more than 200 bipartisan co-sponsors. Among its various provisions, HR 550 would mandate that each machine produce a paper receipt that could be used in a recount. The bill also calls for e-voting vendors to offer greater transparency to their software. By not sending the bill to the floor for a vote, the committee missed any chance of ensuring that November's elections would produce auditable results, Holt said. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 was aimed at preventing the sort of notorious failures such as occurred in Florida in 2000 due to disputes over manually operated punch-card systems. Some $3 billion was earmarked under HAVA to fund state compliance, with most of that money going to purchase e-voting gear, said committee chairman Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) in his opening remarks for the hearing. "Though HAVA did not require the adoption of any particular kind of technology, many jurisdictions purchased electronic voting systems because they felt these systems were best able to meet the requirements of HAVA," said Ehlers. "Not surprisingly, some jurisdictions using this new equipment for the first time have encountered some difficulties," he said. Ehlers cited recent problems with e-voting gear in Montgomery County, Md. Earlier this week, Ehlers submitted an amendment to HAVA to reimburse any voting jurisdictions that print out paper ballots for voters who prefer not to cast their votes on touch-screen voting gear this November. Similar legislation was filed by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in the Senate. The bill calls for up to 75 cents to be spent per paper ballot. Ehlers estimated that it would probably cost no more than $10 million, based on the estimate of the number of voters in precincts using touch-screen gear that don't offer a paper trail. He told Computerworld he offered the amendment because he didn't expect HR 550 to be passed this year. "We thought in light of the problems we've seen, most recently in Maryland, that collectively, these problems were shaking voters' confidence," he said. "We thought if jurisdictions want to give voters another choice, we should support them in that." Ehlers declined to predict when or if the emergency amendment would pass. Like all House members, Ehlers is up for re-election this year, and his district uses e-voting gear. "Certainly, any voting system that is not verifiable and auditable is of concern," he said.
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A campaign to make sure that college students know their voting rights and elections officials know the rules is getting underway by Rock the Vote, a youth-voter group.
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Paperless electronic voting machines in widespread use across the country may be vulnerable to errors or sabotage and cannot be made secure, a draft report by a federal agency said.
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Election Day is still two weeks away, but voters across the state have the option Monday of beginning to cast their ballots early in this pivotal battleground state.
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Forget the hi-tech predictions -- it will be years, if ever, before electors can use the Internet to vote, many policymakers believe.
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The legal question that has dominated court fights over the coming election &#151; the fate of voters who mistakenly try to vote outside their home precinct &#151; appears nearly settled.
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(InfoWorld) - A coalition of voting rights groups on Monday called on the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would require electronic voting machines to have printers attached as a way to audit the touch-screen results. But the lack of a paper trail for many e-voting machines was only one problem among many during the 2006 U.S. elections, said speakers at the Elections: Looking Forward conference, sponsored by Common Cause, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and other groups. Many of the problems attributed to e-voting machines were caused by a lack of training for poll workers or administrative mistakes, said Efrain Escobedo, director of voter engagement at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. Poll workers observed by his group didn't know how to change the paper in machines with paper trails or didn't know how to reboot machines, he said. Participants in the event also described several other problems not related to e-voting: poll workers demanding photo identification when it wasn't required by law, polling places lacking voting materials in languages other than English, polling places inaccessible to disabled people, and long lines. But several speakers called on Congress to pass the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, which would require paper trail printouts with touch-screen e-voting machines. Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, introduced the bill Feb. 5, after a similar piece of legislation failed to pass during the 2005-06 congressional session. The Holt bill has 183 cosponsors, close to half of the House of Representatives. Congress needs to act in the next six to eight months for the legislation to affect the 2008 elections, said Ralph Neas, president and chief executive officer of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group. Neas pointed to the 2006 vote in Sarasota Country, Florida, where e-voting machines did not record a vote from more than 18,000 people in a congressional race decided by less than 400 votes. "Sarasota was a disgrace," Neas said. "Eighteen thousand votes ... inexplicably disappeared into cyberspace. But it's a teachable moment. We've got 18,000 faces now that we can put on the problem." Not all speakers agreed that Congress should move ahead immediately with paper trails. Many visually impaired voters were able to vote without assistance on touch-screen machines for the first time in 2006, said Christina Galindo-Walsh, senior staff attorney with the National Disability Rights Network. Paper trail printouts would again create a two-tier voting system in which some disabled people don't have access to the same information as other voters, she said. Galindo-Walsh and Jim Dickson, vice president for government affairs at the American Association of People with Disabilities, also said it was too late for Congress to mandate paper trail ballots by the 2008 presidential election. E-voting machine vendors wouldn't be able to produce enough printers by 2008, Galindo-Walsh said. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in 2002, mandated standards for voting machines, and those standards are just being completed now, Dickson added. Those standards still need to be tested, and new machines meeting those standards need to be built, he said. "Either you lower the standards for the election equipment, or you live with the timeline that looks like 2010," he said. "You cannot have it both ways." But many voters now question e-voting systems, added Melanie Campbell, executive director and CEO of the Coalition for Black Civic Participation. "The reality is voters are losing confidence in the system," she said.
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With primary contests or caucuses in 24 states today, election officials from three states explain how e-voting systems are readied for voters.
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Election day may be in November, but  some Americans will start casting ballots next week under early  voting laws that have reshaped the campaign landscape and  changed the most fundamental act of democracy.
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With less than six weeks to go before the Nov. 2 presidential election, voting activists said officials still have time to set up a paper trail as a counterweight to an e-voting system they portrayed as wide open to manipulation.
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The nation is girding for tomorrow&#39;s presidential election, worried about the integrity of the voting system, divided over the legitimacy of President Bush&#39;s election four
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As the November presidential election nears, several groups are mobilizing to monitor the voting process -- including a group of observers from across the globe and over a thousand techies who will help evaluate voting machines. By Laila Weir.
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As the primary season continues, observers of the electronic-voting scene ask whether it's possible to tally the ballots efficiently while restoring Americans' faith in the process. Random, mandatory audits of cast ballots show promise, but even after demonstrated successes, not everyone's on board.
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By RACHEL KONRAD     CARSON CITY, Nev.  -- In what could become a model for other states, Nevada voters on Tuesday became the first in the nation to cast ballots in a statewide election on computers that printed paper records of electronic ballots...
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Even non-Americans can cast a vote in the upcoming US presidential election thanks to a Web site tracking world opinion on the race for the White House.