EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | N/A
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | Part one of three Overview of Live Auditing Procedures for Incorporation in the=20 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines The proposed Voluntary Voting System Guidelines are missing guidelines for live auditing, and should include them. "Live auditing" is the process of independent testing of voting system functional units during an election, via methods that do not modify, create, or destroy votes on live ballots. Live auditing is similar to the 'parallel testing' process described in [1] and [2]; however, modern auditable voting system designs enable live auditing to take place without having to take voting machines out of service or to otherwise affect the voting process. Existing voting system test approaches are inadequate to verify voting system reliability. Currently, election officials perform "logic and accuracy tests" before, and in some cases after, the election. However, even if these tests are successful, they disclose nothing about the functionality of the system =5Fduring=5F the election. Logic and accuracy tests also generally do not use live ballots, and are often run in a 'test' mode on the voting systems. =20 Some examples of live audit applications: 1. Live auditing can be used to verify the accuracy of the 'ballot scanning and interpretation' component of some optical scan systems and = VVPAT scanners. With modern auditable voting systems, very high accuracy tests can be implemented with a minimum of additional work. One such technique is described in [4]. 2. Live auditing can also be used to verify the accuracy of the vote tabulation component, when it is decoupled from the rest of the voting process (as it is in several current voting systems). One such technique is described in [5].