RE: [election-services] FYI: BREAKING: NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE RECO

David - thanks, you beat me to it!

Patrick

David's paper sums up the technical solution very well but I would stress that the most important aspects of e-voting from the election officials and administrators point of view is auditablity, transparency and accreditation. All of which are essential to increase voters' confidence in the new methods of voting. This was re-affirmed yet again at a meeting of the Council of Europe that I attended last week. As you are aware accreditation can/should only be done against a standard/specification and EML is the only one in the e-voting space right now. It will gain increased profile when we take it into ISO next year and allow for an international accreditation routine to be established. IEEE are working on a standard for DREs and when they publish it next year it will contain an EML profile as we have been working hand in hand with them.

So our message to NIST and TGDC is there are solutions to the problems and we would welcome the opportunity to explore these further with their officials.

I was very disappointed not to get to the Forum last week but something cropped up at the last minute. Glad to hear it all went very well.

Regards
John
M. +44 (0)7976 157745

----- Original Message ----
From: David RR Webber <david@drrw.info>
To: patrick.gannon@oasis-open.org; John Borras <johnaborras@yahoo.co.uk>; carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
Cc: election-services@lists.oasis-open.org; Eduardo.Gutentag@Sun.COM; mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org
Sent: Sunday, 3 December, 2006 11:34:34 PM
Subject: RE: [election-services] FYI: BREAKING: NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE RECOMMENDSSCRAPPING TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING SYSTEMS!

Patrick,

Please see attached 2 pager that explains how OASIS EML solves this.

Thanks, DW

From: Patrick Gannon [mailto:patrick.gannon@oasis-open.org]
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 9:49 PM
To: 'John Borras'; carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
Cc: election-services@lists.oasis-open.org; Eduardo.Gutentag@Sun.COM; mary.mcrae@oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [election-services] FYI: BREAKING: NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE RECOMMENDSSCRAPPING TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING SYSTEMS!

John,

Yes, I am attending and participating on the US EAC's TGDC next week. I will continue discussions with the NIST staff who have been evaluating EML. Please send your TC's suggestion technical solution and I will forward it to the appropriate NIST staff.

Any further public actions or statements that OASIS should make on this specific topic may not be appropriate, unless there is some way we can tie it to an official NIST release that mentions EML.

Sorry I didn't get to see you at the OASIS Adoption Forum this week in London. It was a great event with lots of good support from various UK government folks.

Best regards,

Patrick Gannon

From: John Borras [mailto:johnaborras@yahoo.co.uk]
Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 9:18 AM
To: Patrick Gannon; carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
Cc: election-services@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [election-services] FYI: BREAKING: NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE RECOMMENDSSCRAPPING TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING SYSTEMS!

Patrick

Are you attending the TGDC plenary meeting on 4/5 December? If so can you push for a solution to this problem based on the use of EML please. TC colleagues have already put forward a techncial solution to me and we can let you have that if it would help. Alternatively we could have a dialogue direct with NIST about it?

I would also like OASIS to openly publish such a statement, would that be in order or do you not want the organisation to step into this politically messy pond?

Regards
John
M. +44 (0)7976 157745

_____________________________________________________________________

On 11/29/06, David RR Webber <david@drrw.info> wrote:
>
> Kudos to NIST on making this assessment,

Actually, what NIST is recommending is "Software Independence":

http://vote.nist.gov/meeting20061204.htm
http://vote.nist.gov/DraftWhitePaperOnSIinVVSG2007-20061120.pdf

Which, if adopted, would mean that paperless DREsof which
touchscreens are a subsetwill not be certifiable by the EAC when the
2007 VVSG come into effect in Dec. 2009. -Joe

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

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----- Original Message ----
From: David RR Webber <david@drrw.info>
To: election-services@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: Patrick Gannon <patrick.gannon@oasis-open.org>
Sent: Thursday, 30 November, 2006 2:13:49 AM
Subject: [election-services] FYI: BREAKING: NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE RECOMMENDSSCRAPPING TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING SYSTEMS!

Kudos to NIST on making this assessment,

DW

NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE TO RECOMMEND SCRAPPING DIRECT RECORDING ELECTRONIC TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING MACHINES!
Says Machines Should be Decertified! Also Says So-Called 'Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails (VVPAT) Should Not Be Used' in Voting Systems!

Huge news. Michael Hickens of InternetNews.com has the scoop. Here's the highlights…

A federal agency is set to recommend significant changes to specifications for electronic-voting machines next week, internetnews.com has learned.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.
…
According to an NIST paper to be discussed at a meeting of election regulators at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on Dec. 4 and 5, DRE vote totals cannot be audited because the machines are not software independent.

In other words, there is no means of verifying vote tallies other than by relying on the software that tabulated the results to begin with.

The machines currently in use are "more vulnerable to undetected programming errors or malicious code," according to the paper.

The NIST paper also noted that, "potentially, a single programmer could 'rig' a major election."

This is incredibly tremendous news!

Appropos of the point we tried to make loudly in an article here at BRAD BLOG earlier today, in which we tried to make clear that paper trails on touch-screen machines (versus paper ballots as used with optical-scan or hand-counted systems) are not an adequate solution to the nation's — or even Florida 13's — current voting dysfunction, NIST agrees that paper trails don't cut it:

The NIST is also going to recommend changes to the design of machines equipped with paper rolls that provide audit trails.

Currently, the paper rolls produce records that are illegible or otherwise unusable, and NIST is recommending that "paper rolls should not be used in new voting systems."

…And, of course, BRAD BLOG Guest Blogger and erstwhile election watchdog/champion John Gideon of VotersUnite.org — previously a supporter of the so-called Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) "solution", such as the one which would be standardized by Rep. Rush Holt's HR550 election reform legislation — concurs now that VVPAT on touch-screen and DRE systems is no longer a viable option.

Joining a growing group of folks who have changed their view on this point in the wake of the various disasters of 2006's Election Meltdown, he's quoted by Hickens thusly:

Many former advocates of VVPAT, including John Gideon, executive director of VotersUnite, now favor requiring that all votes be recorded on paper ballots.

"DREs are unacceptable as voting devices and … the addition of a VVPAT on a DRE is only a placebo to make some voters feel more comfortable," Gideon said in an e-mail.

URL: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3860

---
Brad Friedman
THE BRAD BLOG

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