EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Rebecca Mercuri
Organization : | Notable Software, Inc.
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | Massive exposure to outsider risks The introduction of the use of telecommunications (as per Volume 1, Section 5) further compounds the nature of voting system risks far beyond that which has ever been seen or experienced in U.S. elections. The VVSG permits the use of telecommunications devices to provide access to critical data for voter authentication, ballot definition, vote transmission, vote count, and voter lists. The systems are allowed to be connected “across a broad range of technologies, including, but not limited to:” wireless, microwave, public telecommunications lines, and communications routers. Unfortunately, all such channels are not only highly vulnerable but provide avenues for insider as well as extensive outsider exposure to the election data and also potential access to the object code versions of the software running within the balloting and vote tabulation equipment. There is absolutely nothing in the standard that provides any real confidence or confirmation that accuracy, durability, reliability, maintainability, availability, and integrity can be maintained for voting systems interfaced to telecommunications environments. The misguided encouragement for the use of such devices while simultaneously failing to mandate independent auditability features (such as voter verified paper ballots) can only be construed as either blatant naiveté or an astonishing roadmap for corruption of the election process on the part of the VVSG authors. The implication that all of these problems may somehow be mitigated through the use of cryptographic techniques is folly at best. It therefore is difficult to take any of this set of guidelines seriously, in light of this preposterous design flaw.