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!

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: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