California to Start Review of Voting Machines

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."

Comments

Some of these machines have been in use since 2000

[CaptainPatent]

...But it's about time that electronic voting machines were beta-tested!

Re:Some of these machines have been in use since 2

[king-manic]

The last 2 elections were the beta.

California should use Certified mail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballot materials are "delivered" without proof. Even the moment to cast a ballot should be a postal duty. So-far, they can't say if mail was delivered or not when using the non-stamped commercial mail-meter rate. Every certified mail delivery of a vote from a person should be counted once by the postal Clerk in Record of the Direct Treasury Account. A network would facilitate a real-time audit of the vote; emphasizing between the debt to cast a vote in one's favor in valuation of their debt: a citizen-subject as opposed to a Citizen, not confused with a denizen or a national.

Not to sound particularly paranoid, but...

[infestedsenses]

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.

How will the state ensure that these machines will be identical to those used on election day? Will random voting machines be checked with similar precision during the elections, or what guarantee do we have that these machines will not have been tampered with through "enhanced" source code? I had a glimpse at the FAQ but could not find any information on this, perhaps someone has some pointers?

For this same reason, Consumer Reports and other reviewers buy products anonymously from stores instead of receiving them from vendors, due to previous cases in which the process (such as that intended with the voting machine review) has been taken advantage of.

Uh, no.

[raehl]

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.

Re:Uh, no.

[Kandenshi]

"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.

Source code and freedom of information?

[Marcion]

Anyone know what the rules for freedom of information apply here? Could these rules be used to examine the source code for flaws?

State of California Read This and Save Millions!

[raehl]

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?

Re:Diebold won't comply

[OWJones]

As one of the people involved in the crafting of the North Carolina law and supporting Joyce's lawsuit, I can clarify a bit. We suspect Diebold pulled out of North Carolina not because of the source code escrow issues (which they claim to have complied with in Georgia) but because the CEO of each voting company had to sign a legally binding document saying that the source code his company installed on our machines was the same code that would be placed in escrow and provided to the examiners. On the day this document was due Diebold pulled out of the state, sending a "helpful" letter to the State Board of Elections offering to help "reform" our newly-passed law.

-jdm

Re:I don't think you understand how this works.

[Chandon Seldon]

using a machine AND voter-readable font

Machine counting of votes is also sketchy. The big controversies in the 2004 election weren't about direct-recording machines, they were about the automated ballot counting machines. Unless you have a policy in place to require that the paper ballots be retained after scanning (rather than being destroyed) and a way to force a manual recount if *anyone* suspects machine tampering, you really haven't gained anything.

Someone on Slashdot once suggested separating ballot sorting from ballot counting. Put the ballots in a sorting machine and then use a dumb counting machine to count the sorted stacks. That's a much better plan (as long as the counter checks the stack to verify that it's sorted).