Re: [election-services] FYI: BREAKING: NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTERECOMMENDSSCRAPPING TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING SYSTEMS!

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall@SIMS.Berkeley.EDU>]

On 11/30/06, Paul Spencer <paul.spencer@boynings.co.uk> wrote:
> The mechanism I have proposed before is that the DRE equipment
> should link to counting equipment from another manufacturer. It is
> the counting equipment that provides the feedback to the user. In
> this way, an error in either the DRE or counting equipment is
> immediately detectable. The DRE should also keep a count so that
> this can be compared to the counting equipment count at the end of
> the day. I suspect that this two-stage process (provisional vote and
> confirmation) may need a slight change to the 440 message. Since
> this could be key to promotion of EML in the USA, perhaps we should
> check this and describe the scenario in detail. I will try to have a
> look at it.

The 2005 VVSG has a section on Independent Verification (IV) where one 
set of equipment would check another set of equipment (either by the 
same manufacturer or distinct manufacturers).  However, to the extent 
that such an IV system would be software-dependent--and assuming that 
the NIST recommendation is adopted--they would not be permitted under 
the 2007 VVSG.

(Here's the definition in the whitepaper of "software dependent": "A
voting system is software-dependent if the correctness of the election
results is dependent on the correctness of the software and on
whatever assurances can be obtained that the software on the voting
machine is in fact the software that is supposed to be there.")

best, Joe

-- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
PhD Student, UC Berkeley, School of Information
<http://josephhall.org/>