CSC 379:Week 5, Group 2
Certification Processes for E-Voting Systems
Study Guide
Hidden Standards / Certification tests
http://www.cpsr.org/prevsite/conferences/cfp93/waskell.html
Poor Accountability
Vested Interest
district wants to be forward-moving in technology company wants to be certified
Whistleblowing
Since the software used for voting machines is proprietary, very few people have the chance to discover or check for flaws. At the same time, most of these people work for the company that produced the voting machine and therefore have vested interest in the certification of the voting machines. This extremely private process depends on whistleblowers to point out flaws not found in the certification process. Unfortunately, most such whistleblowers have met the same sad fates as others in the software industry; they have been fired, demoted, and/or challenged in court. Since the requirement for voting software is merely that it be certified, when a whistleblower publicly notifies that the software has been wrongly certified, it is typically used in an election before the whistleblower's claims are verified.
- Whistleblower Lawsuit Points to Weaknesses in Electronic Voting Technology Holli Riebeek, IEEE Spectrum Online
- Whistleblower Charged With Three Felonies for Exposing Diebold's Crimes Peter Soby, Jr., The Huffington Post
- Voting Software Firm Gets Sued Joanna Glasner, Wired
Table of Contents
- What is Electronic voting? An Overview of the Possibilities and Procedures
- How E-Voting will work Kevin Bosner, Howstuffworks
- Electronic Elections Helger Lipmaa,
- The Future of electronic elections Stanford.edu
- E-Voting Standards USACM Policy Brief
- The Existing System and an Impetus for a Change in the Way We Vote
- Voting Technologies in the United States Eric A. Fischer, Congressional Research Service
- A 'modern' democracy that can't count votes CNN- LA Times
- Rights Panel to review Fla. voting Washington Post
- Americans support voting upgrades Dibya Sarkar, FCW
- Voting After Florida: No Easy Answers Lorrie Faith Cranor
- Electronic Voting Technology: Can We Be Spared a Repeat of Election 2000? Robert Bellinger
- Dangers Associated with Electronic voting
- MIT-Caltech study votes for paper ballots, levers, scanning devices MIT
- Report says E-Voting is unsafe Lynn Burke, Wired
- E-voting -- prospects and problems Douglas W. Jones, Free Republic
- Electronic Voting - Evaluating the Threat Michael Ian Shamos, CPSR
- Let's not rush into electronic voting Dan Gillmor, Mercury News Online
- Electronic voting systems face obstacles to adoption Patrick Thibodeau, CNN
- Internet and Electronic Voting Dave Farber & Peter G. Neumann, The Risks Digest
- Computerized Voting - No Standards and a Lot of Questions Ron Newman Statement on Electronic Voting Rebecca Mercuri
- Legal Issues
- The Voting Rights Act Of 1965 United States Department of Justice
- (fixed link) The FEC Proposed Voting Systems Standard Update Dr. Rebecca Mercuri
- Time to Recall E-Vote Machines? Kim Zetter, Wired
- (fixed link) VoteHere Releases VHTi Reference Source Code Implementation Dennis Kucinch, VoteHere
- Planning for the Future - The Proponents View
- The case for electronic voting Farhad Manjoo, Wired
- (modified link) Hart InterCivic's eSlate Electronic Voting System Delivers Fast, Accurate Results During Texas' Spring Elections. Business Wire
- MIT, Caltech join forces to develop reliable, uniform US voting machine MIT
- Experts: E-voting could have prevented U.S. election confusion Rick Perera, Brian Fonseca, Martyn Williams and Terho Uimonen, CNN
- Commentary: Electronic voting likely to emerge a winner Christopher Baum CNET
- Electronic Voting: Computerized polls may save money, protect privacy Lorrie Faith Cranor
- Australia moves to E-voting Kim Zetter, Wired
- Related Sites (Electronic voting providers)
Prompt
Recently there have been many concerns about the certification processes for e-voting systems such as the inability to determine methods used during the certification process and what parts of the e-voting system were not adequately tested. Examine concerns surrounding the certification processes and their ethical implications. Provide links to groups that have investigated the problems you cite and if possible, responses made by the manufacturer/provider of the e-voting system and/or voting district(s) that use the system.
Briefly discuss how individuals and groups have participated in whistleblowing on this topic (methods used, actions taken).
Related External Links
- United States Election Assistance Commission
- Voting Software Firm Gets Sued - WIRED
- New York Times - Scientists’ Tests Hack Into Electronic Voting Machines in California and Elsewhere