EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Lilas Wild
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
Section Comments
Section : | 6.8
Page no. : |
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Comment : | Dear EAC Commissioners: I believe it is within your interpretive powers as the EAC to define the document described as the mandatory paper audit trail in Section 301(a)2 of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). No legitimate audit can be carried out unless that audit uses a contemporaneous independent indelible record of the voter’s intent. No electronic record -- unseen by the voter and subject to programming error, equipment malfunction or even malicious tampering -- can reasonably meet that standard, nor any reprint (unverified by the voter) of that same electronic record. Thus it will vastly improve the legitimacy of the nation’s elections if the EAC clarifies that the manual paper audit trail shall be voter-verified. On January 18, 2005 Professor Ron Rivest introduced a resolution (#13-05) to require voter-verified paper trails at the TGDC meeting. That resolution was voted down, by members of the committee who know less about computer security than the person who introduced the measure. I urge the EAC to reinstate the recommendation in resolution #13-05 and require the essential safeguard of voter-verified paper records.