May 11, 2008

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December 05, 2006

"Federal Panel Rebuffs Guidelines That Insist on a Paper Trail"

From the Washington Post:

"A federal advisory group rejected a measure yesterday that would have discouraged states from using electronic voting systems that lack an independent means of verifying their results, according to a spokeswoman for the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Members of the Technical Guidelines Development Committee, a group created by Congress to advise the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, deadlocked 6 to 6 on the proposal at a meeting held at the NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg. Eight votes are needed to pass a measure on the 15-member committee.

NIST spokeswoman Jan Kosko said the proposal was introduced by Ronald Rivest, a computer science professor at MIT who heads a subcommittee on transparency and security.

Rivest told committee members that software errors in paperless machines could go undetected, leading to a situation in which "an election result is wrong and you have no evidence to show that it's wrong."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 07:43 AM | Permalink. . .

"Daniel Weintraub: Debra Bowen won't push for return to paper ballots"

"Debra Bowen, California's next secretary of state, was accused during the recently ended campaign of hanging too closely with opponents of electronic voting who believe the boxes can be tampered with to rig the results of an election.

Bowen posted items about voting security on her own Internet Web log. She ran an ad showing make-believe thieves stealing an electronic voting machine. Internet sites where "black-box" voting critics gather to exchange conspiracy theories buzzed about her candidacy.

Now, with her victory over incumbent Bruce McPherson secured (and undisputed, as far we know), Bowen will be California's chief elections officer in January and instantly become perhaps the nation's most prominent and influential skeptic of the technology. Or will she?

I spoke with Bowen last week as she was preparing to leave the state Senate for a month's hiatus from government before she is sworn in as secretary of state. She said she has not made any decisions yet about how to approach the issue of electronic voting. But she did say she doesn't intend to push to return California to a more paper-oriented system, or to encourage the universal use of optical scan technology, which allows voters to make their choices on paper ballots that are then counted by computers.

Instead, Bowen said she will likely focus on making the new voting technology more user-friendly.

"It's not just a matter of the hacking and all of the things people are concerned about," she said. "There have been a lot of usability issues. ... There are a variety of practical problems that deserve some attention."

She is concerned about the training of poll workers, many of whom are retirees with little familiarity with computers. And she is troubled by what happens when the electronic systems fail."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 07:38 AM | Permalink. . .

December 04, 2006

"Double filer is within the law"

"Investigations in San Bernardino and Riverside counties have concluded that Keith McCarter violated no laws when he filed for candidacy for different offices in the November election.

McCarter was under investigation by the San Bernardino County district attorney's office at the time of the Nov. 7 election, when he appeared on ballots as a candidate for the Riverside Community College District's Board of Trustees and a candidate for the Fontana City Council. In the end, McCarter lost in both races.

San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney John Goritz said McCarter met the "minimum requirement to run for office in Fontana," which meant being registered in Fontana at the time he sought office. Therefore, Goritz said, he broke no laws in San Bernardino County.

Earlier, Ingrid Wyatt, spokeswoman for the Riverside County district attorney's office, said McCarter would not be prosecuted there.

"After review of the material, it appears no crime was committed in Riverside County," she said.

McCarter praised the investigators for their professionalism.

"It was a simple misunderstanding," he said.

"When someone seeks to engage in activities within the public arena, they should take affirmative steps to make sure the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed when it comes to public actions and activities," he said. "In future campaigns, I will seek to avoid similar misunderstandings."

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson's office declined to investigate the matter after the election, leaving it to local authorities."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 10:18 AM | Permalink. . .

"Election probe a good start"

"Our View: The problems have been well-documented, but last week's decision to launch this investigation is the first welcome sign that anyone at the top has any real concerns.

The county Board of Supervisors has taken a good first step in deciding to look into problems that arose during and after the Nov. 7 election.

Among the supposed benefits of electronic voting ---- of which Riverside County was a pioneer, and for which it spent in excess of $30 million ---- were greater accuracy, reliability and speed. What we appear to have gotten for that money was less reliability and slower results. The question of accuracy remains unanswered and here we are, almost four weeks after the election, and the registrar of voters office just posted what appear to be final numbers late Saturday.

State law gives the registrar four weeks after an election to certify it ---- make a final count ---- but it has rarely, if ever, taken that long before. Nor should it.

The problems have been well-documented, but last week's decision by the Board of Supervisors to launch this investigation is the first welcome sign that anyone at the top has any real concerns.

We have been critical of Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore for her lack of urgency in counting ballots, but there are systemic problems that are not her fault, as well.

On Election Night, long lines of voters backed up an hour or more at some polling stations. In some cases, the wait was exacerbated by voting machine printers running out of paper. This despite a voter turnout that was actually smaller than predicted, meaning elections officials seriously underestimated the amount of paper these new machines would use in creating the so-called "paper trail" that is supposed to assure ballots are counted accurately.

There is no reason polling stations should lack enough paper, or that pollworkers would be without training to change it. But much of the crunch at the end, too, is a byproduct of Southwest County's status as a bedroom/commuter community. A great number of residents leave for work too early to vote and don't get back into the area until 6:30 or 7 p.m., creating a crush in that last hour."

The editorial is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 10:14 AM | Permalink. . .

Nov. 7: Tipping point for e-voting?"

"Technically, the Nov. 7 election was a success for supporters of the touchscreen voting machines on which more than 100,000 San Joaquin County voters cast ballots.

Politically, the election's results could turn out to be their worst nightmare.

Debra Bowen, a Democratic state senator from Redondo Beach, defeated incumbent Bruce McPherson in the race for secretary of state on Election Day. Bowen is a vocal critic of the Diebold voting machines used in San Joaquin County and has promised to review all the electronic equipment McPherson certified earlier this year.

Deborah Hench, San Joaquin County's top elections official, won't speculate on what Bowen's election means to the future of the 1,625 ATM-like Diebold TSx machines the county agreed to purchase for $5.7million three years ago. And while few believe the new secretary of state will begin her tenure by decertifying the equipment, some electronic-voting opponents believe Bowen will be more open to their concerns.

"Right now, things have been shifted badly in favor of the vendors," said Jim March of the nonprofit Black Box Voting, a leading voice among e-voting critics. "A little balance would be nice here."

Bowen was not available for comment. But Evan Goldberg, her chief of staff, said Bowen "wants to take a larger, well-reasoned look" at the TSx and other electronic voting systems many counties purchased this year to meet federal disability-access requirements.

"There are a lot of questions that voters deserve to have answered before these are used in the 2008 election," Goldberg said."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 10:11 AM | Permalink. . .

December 01, 2006

"Consultant rips into Sequoia's vote wares, election commission"

"Denver's Election Day debacle was caused by custom Sequoia software that was "very poorly designed and fundamentally flawed," a consultant said Wednesday.

"It does not meet or even approach professional standards," said Fred Hessler, of Fujitsu Consulting, in his first report to Mayor John Hickenlooper's task force examining the election mess.

Hessler was reporting on voter registration software that slowed to a crawl and stopped, causing three-hour lines and leading an estimated 18,000 citizens to give up their attempt to cast a ballot.

Hessler said his team had 100 users open the first log-on page of the software, and it slowed when only one person logged on. He said that's because the program started accessing the database with that first page, and it should not.

Users followed standard computer procedure and closed a page by hitting the "x" in the upper right corner, but the program wasn't designed to work that way.

"Ninety percent of users did not exit correctly," he said.

The software failed to close these open sessions even after three hours.

"These are not minor oversights or errors," he said. "This is Programming 101."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:43 AM | Permalink. . .

"Federal institute blasts paperless vote machines"

"Electronic systems can't be secured -- optical-scan backed"

"Paperless electronic voting machines used throughout much of the country "cannot be made secure," according to draft recommendations issued this week by a federal agency that advises the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

The assessment by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, one of the government's premier research centers, is the most sweeping condemnation of such voting systems by a federal agency.

In a report hailed by critics of electronic voting, the institute said voting systems should allow election officials to recount ballots independently from a voting machine's software. The recommendations endorse "optical-scan" systems in which voters mark paper ballots that are read by a computer and electronic systems that print a paper summary of each ballot, which voters review and elections officials save for recounts.

The institute's recommendations are to be debated next week before the Technical Guidelines Development Committee, charged by Congress to develop standards for voting systems. To become effective, the institute's recommendations must then be adopted by the Election Assistance Commission, which was created by Congress to promote changes in election systems after the 2000 debacle in Florida.

If the commission agrees with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the practical impact may not be felt until 2009 or 2010, the soonest that new standards would be implemented. The standards that the Election Assistance Commission will adopt are voluntary, but most states require election officials to deploy voting systems that meet national or federal criteria.

The institute says in its report that the lack of a paper trail for each vote "is one of the main reasons behind continued questions about voting system security and diminished public confidence in elections." The report repeats the contention of computer security experts that "a single programmer could 'rig' a major election."

Fears about rigging have animated critics for years, but there has been no conclusive evidence that such fraud has occurred. Electronic voting systems have had technical problems -- including unpredictable screen freezes -- leaving voters wondering whether their ballots were properly recorded.

Computer scientists and others have said that the security of electronic voting systems cannot be guaranteed and that election officials should adopt systems that produce a paper record of each vote in case of a recount. The institute report embraces that critique, introducing the concept of "software independence" in voting systems.

The institute says voting systems should not rely on a machine's software to provide a record of the votes cast. Some electronic voting system manufacturers have introduced models that include printers to produce a separate record of each vote -- and that can be verified by a voter before leaving the machine -- but such paper trails have had their own problems."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 07:29 AM | Permalink. . .

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