Sparks Fly in E-Voting Debate

MSNBC - Alan Boyle
02.16.04

With Election Data Services predicting that 50 million voters--28 percent of the projected U.S. voting populace--will use paperless electronic voting systems this year, researchers at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science intensely argued over the advantages and disadvantages of e-voting; however, there was little disagreement that the insecurity of e-voting systems has the potential to make this year's presidential election even more riddled with errors than the last election. More...

Trusted Agent Report - Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting System
01.20.04

At the request of the State of Maryland, RABA Technology’s Innovative Solution Cell (RiSC) performed a review of the DIEBOLD touch-screen electronic voting system. A team of security experts reviewed the SAIC report commissioned by Maryland and went on to hold a "Red Team" exercise to discover vulnerabilities in the actual voting system as it will be deployed for the March 2004 primary. Click here to read the report.

The Trouble with Electronic Voting Systems
(low-tech discussion of the technology)

This article is a brief overview of the problems with electronic voting. It’s meant to be a high-level look at the problem with paperless voting systems. For more in-depth information on the challenges posed by electronic voting systems, please visit our Links page.

One of the most common questions people ask when discussing electronic voting is this: If my financial transactions can be secured over the Internet, why can’t my vote be secured?  More....

IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee 38 (SCC 38)
technical discussion

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), is a non-profit, technical professional association of more than 380,000 individual members in 150 countries.

Through its members, the IEEE (pronounced eye-triple-E) is a leading authority in technical areas ranging from computer engineering, biomedical technology and telecommunications, to electric power, aerospace and consumer electronics, among others.

The IEEE has a standards committee related to electronic voting. The main committee is the Standards Coordinating Committee 38 (SCC 38). There are two related subcommittees, dubbed Projects. These are Project 1583 and 1622. Each is briefly described and links to the IEEE Project website are provided.

It should be noted that there appears to be a strong and unprecedented attempt by companies with vested interests in the standards to be unduly influencing these groups. The integrity of worldwide standards is absolutely critical and the best outcome will be standards that do not inherently favor those working on the standard and that ensure fair and accurate voting.

Project 1583 - Voting Equipment Standard
Project P1583 is charged with development of a standard of requirements and evaluation methods for election voting equipment. The standard will provide technical specifications for electronic, mechanical, and human factors that can be used by manufacturers of voting machines or by those purchasing such machines. More....

Project 1622 - Electronic Data Interchange
Project P1622 will develop electronic data interchange formats to be used by components of the voting system for exchange of electronic data. More...