EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Cem Kaner
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | Disputes about the reasonable levels of security for voting systems are often characterized in terms of partisan politics. There is a perception, shared by a few million American voters, that the voting system has been exploited, primarily in recent past by the Republican party, in order to steal elections. It is not relevant to my Comments whether this perception is accurate. What is relevant is that: - The auditing and recounting capabilities for our voting systems are so grossly inadequate that it is impossible to settle the perception of rigged elections using empirical methods. As a consequence, the results of the elections become matters for political spin and voter faith. This is an unacceptable level of assurance for financial accounting, let alone for voting-process accounting. The inability of our government to provide authoritative results for the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections is toxic for American democracy. A draft standard for voting systems that does not establish credible auditability is fundamentally inadequate.