Category Archives: HR811

Daniel Castro’s response to my ITIF review

Posted on October 5, 2007 | 1 comment

Daniel Castro has responded to review of the ITIF eVoting report that he wrote.

In that review I agree with his thesis that “end-to-end verifiable” voting systems should be encouraged and be part of the debate on electronic voting and I basically agree with his recommendations. But I strongly disagreed with his assessment of the relative risks of paper systems, electronic voting systems, and electronic voting systems that print a voter verified paper trail. I also found much of the tone of his report offensive.

My assessment is:
e2e verifiable system > paper system > eVoting with voter verified paper trail > eVoting

His appears to be:
e2e verifiable system > eVoting > eVoting with voter verified paper trail > paper system

And I believe that we both agree the e2e voting systems need more support and some trial runs but are not yet ready for widespread deployment.

To put it pithily, “I agree with the thesis of this disagreeable report“.

Here is his response. This is posted with his permission:
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Posted in fraud, HR811, itif, legislation, punchscan, security, votingmachines

summary of ITIF’s eVoting report

Posted on September 20, 2007 | 7 comments

I’m writing up a full point-by-point review of the ITIF eVoting report. [Update 9/20/07: It’s written. Here is the point-by-point review]

For now, here is a quick summary of my impressions.

I agree with the basic premise of the report that the debate about electronic voting needs to be broader and include other verification technologies than voter-verified paper audit trails. I am in basic agreement with the policy recommendations of the paper but I feel that these recommendations need some caveats. I discuss the recommendations below.

I disagree with much of the setup of the report. The susceptibility to fraud of electronic voting machines is downplayed too much as is the ability of voter-verified paper audit trails to mitigate that. The tone of the report when talking about organizations promoting voter verified audit trails or promoting distrust of eVoting is absolutely poisonous and Mr. Castro should be ashamed. I suspect that much of the poor reception this paper is getting is due to that.
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7 Comments

Posted in fraud, HR811, itif, legislation, news, punchscan, security, votingmachines

Buzz about ITIF’s eVoting report

Posted on September 19, 2007 | 13 comments

[Update 9/20/07: I have read the report and review it here: summary and points-by-point]

I just got an interesting comment from Daniel Castro, the author of an Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) report on electronic voting. Castro’s comment:

I just wanted to make sure you were aware of the report we just released on electronic voting. We discuss the limitation of paper audit trails, alternative technologies (to paper) that can be used for audit trails, and suggest that we should focus the national discussion not on whether or not we should have paper trails, but rather on how to implement universally verifiable (or end-to-end verifiable) voting systems.

From the report’s teaser:
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Posted in fraud, HR811, itif, legislation, news, punchscan, security, votingmachines

seeking clarity on ‘Software independence’ in voting systems

Posted on September 11, 2007 | 4 comments

In response to the Timothy Ryan op-ed “A Damaging Paper Chase In Voting”, Rick Carback (one of the punchscan developers) wrote about HR811:

…the article makes an excellent point — mandating a specific technology (which has been known to be problematic since the inception of voting) is a bad idea. By contrast, the authors of the bill could have taken the approach of Software Independence, where the outcome of an election can be determined independently of a piece of software. Any software independence approach would rule out paperless DREs, a hidden audit trail printout, and other ill-conceived technology. DREs with unreliable printers for a VVPAT approach could also be excluded, but you would need to add a reliability requirement (not hard to do). Our system, and similar systems like PAV, would more easily fit into such a definition.

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4 Comments

Posted in fraud, HR811, legislation, punchscan, security, votingmachines

washingtonpost points out that HR811 conflicts with systems like punchscan

Posted on September 10, 2007 | 5 comments

From A Damaging Paper Chase In Voting by Timothy J. Ryan for the Washington Post comes this piece opposing HR811. Among other things it points out that HR811 would conflict with voting systems that cannot provide a paper trail (like Prime III, an Auburn University project that I am not familiar with and hence do not endorse in any way) or cannot preserve all paper records (like punchscan) I would be interested in hearing the reaction of people involved with punchscan to this piece.

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Posted in HR811, legislation, news, punchscan, security, votingmachines

Avi Rubin supports HR811

Posted on September 10, 2007 | 1 comment

Avi Rubin is a professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University who is famous for bringing to light vulnerabilities in Diebold Election Systems’s Accuvote electronic voting machines.

(read about his book about the experience: Brave new ballot; The battle to safeguard democracy in the age of electronic voting)
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Posted in HR811, legislation, news, votingmachines

HR811 postponed until at least September 17

Posted on September 8, 2007 | Leave a comment

From the Ballot Access News:

HR 811, the bill in Congress to require vote-counting machines to produce a paper trail, will not be taken up in the House until September 17 at the earliest. Congressman Rush Holt (D-N.J.) had hoped it would pass the House this week, but it has fierce opposition, both from elections officials who don’t want a paper trail, and from activists who want to eventually eliminate all electronic vote-counting machines. Thus the bill has enemies from both directions.

support HR811 if you are so inclined

Posted on September 6, 2007 | Leave a comment

I am nuetral / undecided about HR811. If you have decided one way or another, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has an advocacy page for supporting HR811. You should be able to edit the message to indicate whatever view you have; support/rejection/something more nuanced.

From the the EFF HR811 advocacy page:

Along with requiring machines to produce a voter-verified paper ballot, H.R. 811 mandates random audits and many other critical reforms. For over three years, EFF has been helping Rep. Rush Holt move this legislation forward, and support from individuals like you has been crucial in garnering an astounding 215 cosponsors. Hundreds of activists joined EFF for Washington, D.C. lobby days in 2005 and 2006, and thousands of letters have poured in to Congress.

Now those efforts are paying off, and victory in the House is within reach — take action now and fight for fair, transparent elections.

NY Times now advocates for a Touch-Screen Voting ban

Posted on September 6, 2007 | Leave a comment

Quoting the New York Times (care of the Brad blog):

It is unfortunate that the bill does not contain a provision banning the use of touch-screen voting machines. A touch-screen ban would encourage states to use optical scan machines, which rely on paper ballots read by a computer, like a standardized test form. Optical scans are less expensive and less vulnerable to vote theft.

There is still time before the bill becomes law to add a ban on touch-screen voting. If the House fails to do so, the Senate should, and it should fight for it to be in the final bill.

There has been a spirited debate about how quickly to require reforms to be implemented. There have been calls for putting a solution off until 2012. That is too long to wait.

HR811 coming up for a vote

Posted on September 6, 2007 | 2 comments

A good summary from Ed Felten’s Freedom to Tinker blog:

H.R. 811, the e-voting bill originally introduced by Rep. Rush Holt, is reportedly up for a vote of the full House of Representatives tomorrow.
…
H.R. 811 gets the big issues right, requiring a voter-verified paper ballot with post-election audits to verify that the electronic records are consistent with the paper ballots.

The bill is cautious where caution is warranted. For example, it gives states and counties the flexibility to choose optical-scan or touch-screen systems (or others), as long as there is a suitable voter-verified paper record. Though some e-voting activists want to ban touch-screens altogether, I think that would be a mistake. Touch screens, if done correctly — which no vendor has managed yet, I’ll admit — do offer some advantages.

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Posted in EFF, electronic_frontier_foundation, HR811, legislation, news, votingmachines