EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | David B. Arragon
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
Section Comments
Section : | 6.7
Page no. : |
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Comment : | Section Comments: Wireless (Section 6.7) §6.7 correctly notes several of the reasons that wireless, especially wireless RF, is inappropriate for voting equipment. Bearing in mind that I earn my living making wireless network switching equipment for demanding (i.e., not just home or small office) applications, I consider the use of that technology in voting equipment to be very weakly motivated. I can think of no function a voting machine could perform wirelessly, tha it could not perform with a wired connection. By contrast, there is a crucial capability tha can be provided using a wire but not by wireless -- namely making the presence or absence of a connection obvious to election officials and observers. That being so, it is strange that §6.7 fails to draw the obvious conclusion form its own informative material, and disallow wireless in this type of system. Even though I recommend that large portions of §6.7 be removed, I comment on some of them below. The purpose is to demonstrate that the gap between current wireless capability and the needs of a polling place is still too large to be "fixed up" by such requirements.