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California to Start Review of Voting Machines

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the nitty-gritty dept.

An anonymous reader writes "California Secretary of State Debra Bowen just announced details about the previously discussed 'top-to-bottom review' of almost all voting and counting systems used in the state. The team features big names in e-voting security: David Wagner, Matt Bishop, Ed Felten, Matt Blaze, and Harri Hursti, among others. Vendors have time to submit their machines including documentation and source code until July 1st or face severe restrictions, including decertification, for the 2008 elections. Scheduled to start next week, the review will include a red-team attack and going through the source code."

3 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Uh, no. by raehl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Voting machines provide no advantage

    Electronic voting machines are in virtually every way superior to paper voting machines.

    They prevent you from accidentally submitting an invalid ballot.

    They can be updated with a correct ballot much easier than actually printing ballots.

    They can more easily accommodate voting by the disabled.

    They can randomly display the list of candidates, eliminating the 'first ballot position' advantage.

    What does NOT have many advantages, and has several disadvantages, is electronic vote-STORING machines. We definitely don't want any of those. But as long as the voting machine kicks out a voter-readable paper ballot, we don't really even need to know the software it's running. Anything nefarious will be obvious on the ballots.

    --
    paintball
    1. Re:Uh, no. by Kandenshi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "The day after the election, you best have a paper record saying you voted for my man Mr. McFakename.
      It wouldd be most ... unfortunate if you were to fall down a flight of stairs repeatedly."

      What I'm subtly alluding to is vote buying/intimidation being possible if you take an official record of your voting behaviours home with you.

  2. State of California Read This and Save Millions! by raehl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I appreciate California's effort to verify that their electronic voting machines work. I have developed an economic process for certifying electronic voting machines.

    1) Determine if the voting machine produces a voter-readable, paper ballot.
    2) Determine if this ballot is the OFFICIAL voting record.
    3) If 1 and 2 are true, then the machine is good. If not, it's not.

    There you go. Why do people insist on making easy problems hard?

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    paintball