EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Stanley A. Klein
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | The draft VVSG makes a few important improvements, primarily in usability, an area missing from previous standards (FEC 1990 and 2002). However, in the very important areas of reliability, security, integrity, and trustworthiness, this draft VVSG is so loaded with loopholes and weak or unenforced requirements to make it mostly a facade covering a hollow, meaningless core. Being the third such document over 15 years with ample time having passed for correction of mistakes and improvement of requirements, the VVSG now appears clearly intended to allow voting administrators to – knowingly or unknowingly – make the false claim that their voting systems have been “rigorously tested to the highest standards.” Voting is the most critical and fundamental process of a democratic society, a process from which "the consent of the governed" and thereby all governmental authority is derived. Voting systems must be required, designed, tested, operated, monitored, and certified to be reliable, accurate, secure, usable, and auditable. Systems should be so designed that errors and malfunctions are recoverable, that any malicious tampering is both detectable and recoverable, and that ordinary citizens are fully capable of understanding, observing, and knowledgeably participating in all processes and procedures necessary to ensure these attributes. The American people have good reason to become deeply alarmed about the serious unreliability, insecurity, and general untrustworthiness of the voting systems through which they participate in the fundamental act of citizenship. This draft VVSG does little to make voting systems reliable, secure, or trustworthy and mainly provides a facade allowing false claims that voting systems have been tested to proper standards.