EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | James Soper
Organization : | Self
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | Sirs, I am a computer professional with 20+ years experience. I would like to submit the following comments about our election systems: o voting software must be open or disclosed source, period. The government should fund work such as that being done at OpenVoting.org. o there must be a way for the public to positively verify that any source code that is inspected, tested or escrowed is actually THE source code that was used to generate the object code for the voting systems. This may mean that the compilation must be public. Everything must be easily traceable back to the source code. This is mandatory. o the vendor should not be allowed to choose who will test their machines. This is like allowing a baseball player to choose and who will test them for steroids. o the vendor should not be paying the testers. o the entire testing and certification process needs to be open and transparent. It is nearly impossible to know who is testing what. That must change. o there may be NO wireless devices on ANY voting systems, period. o there must be a paper audit trail, always. o I agree with the California Secretary of State the rolls of paper are unsuitable for audits and recounts. o audits need to be stronger, probably on the scale of 5%. o recounts need to be more frequent. If a race is within 10%, a recount should be automatic, paid for by the government. o precinct results need to be posted on the internet, exactly as they are posted outside the voting place on election night. o The Carter-Baker commission has proposed reworking the primary system. I do not know if that falls under your charter, but I think that the leadoff state should be Missouri as it demographically reflects the US. Missouri also borders on the south, midwest, and plains states, and contains farmland and 2 real cities. New Hampshire and Iowa do not "look like" America. Missouri does. Thank you for your consideration. James Soper