EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | David B. Aragon
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | WSG Should Better Reflect EAC's Responsibility and Mission Voting is how citizens hold govemment accountable2, 3, 4. Publ ic scrutiny is not only a security measure for Election Day, but a basic democratic institution that should be honored and reinforced at all times - especially in the voting process. Several times during the twenty-five years I have worked in high tech, some new advance has led segments of the public to imagine that long-established standards of ethics and good judgement were obsolete (e.g. the "New Economy"). The very opposite is true. The technologies envisioned in this document are ephemeral; they will become obsolete just as quickly as those they replaced. The basic institutions of democracy and citizenship will continue to matter long after any given technology is gone, Those institutions are what EAC must protect and value. The proposed VVSG misses the forest of voting rights for the trees of specific electronic components. The document implicitly assumes that technically correct operation of each component is an adequate substitute for traditional public scrutiny of the entire election process. Some of my colleagues focus on the possibility of fraud. I am saying something slightly different, and I ask that you consider this point carefully: A system can be build and operated by honest people and achieve technically correct operation, but if its operation diminishes the proper role of voters and observers, i.e, if it impedes good citizenship, then its effect is corrupt. If the election system lacks transparency, a contested election has only two possible outcomes: (a) Voters and watchdog groups will demand evidence that the system cannot provide, or (b) They willleam not to make such demands. Either outcome would be a catastrophe. A system that reduces transparency serves corrupt ends.7•8 In terms ofVVSG's own functional divisions, it is a usability defect, because it impairs the voters' ability to do what they have come to the polls to do, viz.: hold government accountable. EAC is responsible to set high standards that will bring actual improvement, not merely to create a compromise between various interests so that funds can be spent expeditiously. It is sometimes argued that raising the standards to address flaws in existing systems will be unfair to those who have already committed to those systems. But producers have meanwhile cited the absence of standards to justify continuing to produce the flawed systems. Thus, the reasoning on this point has been circular. EAC is responsible to break that cycle.