EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Rachel Garner
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | Dear EAC Commissioners: I'm a resident of Nebraska. We were concerned enough that our central committee gathered to discuss problems and to draw up a resolution regarding the election system and its huge vulnerablity to electronic glitches and manipulation. Please give attention to the RESOLUTION BY THE NEBRASKA DEMOCRATIC PARTY STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE--- MANDATORY AUDIT SYSTEM FOR VOTING MACHINES found below. I also wish to say that I believe it is within your interpretive powers as the EAC to define the document described as the mandatory paper audit trail in Section 301(a)2 of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). No legitimate audit can be carried out unless that audit uses a contemporaneous independent indelible record of the voter's intent. No electronic record -- unseen by the voter and subject to programming error, equipment malfunction or even malicious tampering -- can reasonably meet that standard, nor any reprint (unverified by the voter) of that same electronic record. Thus it will vastly improve the legitimacy of the nation's elections if the EAC clarifies that the manual paper audit trail shall be voter-verified. On January 18, 2005 Professor Ron Rivest introduced a resolution (#13-05) to require voter-verified paper trails at the TGDC meeting. That resolution was voted down, by members of the committee who know less about computer security than the person who introduced the measure. I urge the EAC to reinstate the recommendation in resolution #13-05 and require the essential safeguard of voter-verified paper records. I further urge you to adopt the following requirements: a) Exit poles should be conducted at randomly selected locations by qualified independent non-political organizations as the first step in verification of the accuracy of the results reported by the voting machines. b) If there is a discrepancy between the exit poles and the computer reported results of more than the margin of error or 3%, the candidates would be entitled to ask and receive a manual recount at the expense of the government agency. c) In addition each voter should be furnished with a printed report and the ability to correct mistakes before the machine confirms the vote. This "voting receipt" should be given to the election committee and kept on file in a save place for at least one year. d) In addition, the election commissioner should make a copy of the computer program used in the voting machine immediately prior to the day of election. This copy should be kept in a safe place and made available to independent computer programmers for examination if a recount is called for. Such an examination could help determine if the voting machine was accurately reporting the votes cast. e) Supervisors of voting in each state and district must be persons who are independent of any political party and do not have a vested interest in one party over another. f) All vote counting machines and machines that receive the votes must have an open code that allows independent technicians to audit and inspect the machines before and after all uses to prevent tampering. The makers of the machines must not be allowed to keep the code secret. g) Mo wireless capability of any kind should be allowed in any voting systems; h) Clarify terms used for VVPAT such that standards for voter-verified paper ballots (e.g. optical scan) are not confused with standards for voter-verified paper audit trails (e.g. printers on DREs); i) Adopt Resolution #17-05 for more stringent testing of voting systems for security; and j) Require interoperability so that voting systems from different vendors are able to work together more freely, saving taxpayer resources.