EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | John Gideon
Organization : | VotersUnite!
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | "The presence of the paper record can significantly increase voter satisfaction and trust in the accuracy of electronic voting systems and in elections. Electronic voting systems are inherently complex; consequently it is difficult to ascertain whether they are implemented correctly. The issue of whether the DRE-VVPAT voting system has accurately recorded the voter's intent is less important because the paper is a tangible, permanent record of voters' choices that can be manually audited or recounted or used in case of problems with the electronic voting system." This paragraph was written by John Wack, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in a document called, "Draft Standard for Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails in DRE Voting Systems (DRE-VVPAT): Supplement to the 2002 Voting Systems Standard". This document is a draft of suggested standards that were accepted by the "Technical Guidelines Development Committee" (TGDC) and presented to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) for inclusion in the 2002 Voting Systems Standards (VSS). These standards are supposed to be the 'hallmark' to which all voting systems are federally qualified. (For more on the alphabet-soup of elections organizations see; "Corporate Control of the Election Process" by this author.) Is this statement truly representative of the thinking of the members of the TGDC? It appears that it is, because this draft was passed on, after approval from the whole committee, to the EAC for their approval and inclusion into the VSS. So what does this paragraph mean? Essentially it says that if a voting system has a printer included, the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting system that includes that printer does not have to accurately record the intent of the voters. The issue of accuracy is less important, according to Mr. Wack and the members of the TGDC who approved the document. This is an egregious breach of the public faith. It is also an endorsement of a violation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, Section 301(a) (5), which requires that all voting systems meet the accuracy requirements as specified in the 2002 VSS. Mr. Wack's statement should inform counties and states that they can never rely on DRE voting machines to count properly when they are equipped with a VVPAT printer or at any other time, for that matter. This lackadaisical approach to machine accuracy gives very real importance to the use of audits to ensure that every vote is being counted as it was cast by the voter. Mr. Wack's statement should be a warning to every county and state in the country that will be using voting systems with a VVPAT printer that the machines should not be relied upon to accurately record the votes and that audits must be done. These states must ensure they have passed legislation to require those audits. The TGDC doesn't seem to care if votes are being accurately counted by the machines, and the TGDC is responsible for writing the standards to which all voting systems are held. If they don't care; how much care can we expect from the vendors or the Independent Test Authorities who use the TGDC's standards to test the machines?