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Voting System: Voting Systems
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The Voluntary Voting System Guidelines define requirements for conformance of voting systems that voting system vendors shall meet. The Guidelines ... provides the framework, procedures, and requirements that testing labs responsible for the testing of voting certification systems shall follow. The requirements and procedures in the Guidelines may also be used by States to certify voting systems. To ensure that correct voting system software has been distributed without modification, the Guidelines include requirements for certified voting system software to be deposited in a national software repository. This provides an independent means for election officials to verify the software they purchase.
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NEW YORK, Oct. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Sequoia Voting Systems today announced it will offer the ImageCast, an unparalleled optical scan voting system, in New York State. The ImageCast scans paper ballots as it tabulates votes, providing an extra layer of auditability to elections. Furthermore, it rapidly reads ballots in real time as voters insert them in the ballot box.
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At the heart of Biddulph’s Perfect Voting System, PVS, is a computer-printed, voter-verified paper ballot and stub. In the first step, the voter would make his or her vote selections electronically. The system would then print out a ballot and stub, which would both include the same secret password. If the voter realizes he made a mistake, or even has a change of heart, he could use the unique password to amend his vote and produce a new ballot as required under the new Federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
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Recent election problems have sparked great interest in managing the election process through the use of electronic voting systems. While computer scientists, for the most part, have been warning of the perils of such action, vendors have forged ahead with their products, claiming increased security and reliability. Many municipalities have adopted electronic systems, and the number of deployed systems is rising. For these new computerized voting systems, neither source code nor the results of any third-party certification analyses have been available for the general population to study, because vendors claim that secrecy is a necessary requirement to keep their systems secure. Recently... the source code purporting to be the software for a voting system from a major manufacturer appeared on the Internet. This manufacturer’s systems were used in Georgia’s state-wide elections in 2002, and the company just announced that the state of Maryland awarded them an order valued at up to $55.6 million to deliver touch screen voting systems.[1]
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The Voluntary Voting System Guidelines shall become effective 24 months after its final adoption by EAC. At that time, every component of every voting system submitted for certification testing shall be tested according to these Guidelines. The Guidelines are voluntary, and it is up to the states to decide if, how, and when to adopt the Guidelines. Therefore, during the 24-month period that precedes the effective date of the Guidelines, a state may require voting systems used in the state to comply in whole or in part with the Guidelines, notwithstanding the effective date.
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Voting system software should be publicly disclosed and independently reviewed and the hardware should available for examination by computer experts with no financial ties to the vendors. There is a general consensus among computer security experts that 'security through obscurity', the notion that security depends on secrecy, should never be used as a primary security measure. Computer scientist Justin Moore has observed "The best systems have the fewest secrets." Anything that needs to be kept secret - such as a password, an encryption key, a physical building key -- in order for the system to work securely is a potential point of attack. The more things that need to be kept secret or secure, the more points of attack. The best systems are the ones where you can hand over the entire source code to the attacker, and they still can't get anywhere. In other words, the source code reveals no points of attack, and no longer needs to be secret.
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