Debugging The E-vote/Tom Paine/not new/sorry if dupe

[FogerRox]

Debugging The E-vote
Matthew Zimmerman
August 17, 2005



Matthew Zimmerman is a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

More than 1,700 days ago, the most significant breakdown of election equipment and procedures in U.S. history occurred. Nearly a year ago, numerous documented incidents of malfunctioning voting machines again cast doubt on close races across the country. Now, Congress is once again set to return from its summer recess solidly unsure of what it will do on the election reform front. The Help America Vote Act, passed on the wings of post-2000 voter indignation, has resulted in what many critics expected of the wide-reaching legislation: some solid gains, plenty of good intentions, and too many questions left dangerously unanswered. One of those outstanding questions is what, if anything, to do about paperless electronic voting machines.

Ask nearly any independent computer security expert familiar with today’s e-voting technology and you’ll likely be met with a familiar refrain: The current approach—closed technology with minimal oversight and insufficient audit capabilities—is a bad idea. Open government advocates aren’t terribly thrilled with the idea, either. Absent transparency, voter-verifiability and the ability to conduct legitimate recounts, such election systems will continue to raise doubts and foster suspicion, whatever the benefits. Eager to quickly undo the damage inflicted by the hanging chad, Congress could not have had this in mind.

The solution might just emerge from New Jersey. Rush Holt, a Democratic representative from the state that just implemented its own voter-verified paper ballot requirement last month, has authored the most well-thought-out proposal to emerge on the subject and is currently making a strong push for support. This week, in the second such event in a month, constituents are meeting with dozens of undecided members of Congress in their home districts in the hopes of swaying them to support this promising bill. The bill's inability to thus far muster overwhelming support owes more to the unnecessarily polarized politics of election reform than to any legislative shortcoming.

Co-sponsored by more than 140 (mostly Democratic) members of the House, Holt’s Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act would require that voting machines in federal elections produce paper records available for voters to inspect and confirm at the time the vote is cast. Critically, the act would (among other things) also require mandatory manual recounts, prohibit the use of wireless networking technologies, require a verified chain-of-custody record of machine software, demand more robust federal accreditation and provide much-needed funding.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050817/debugging_the_evote.php

[autorank]

1. Great Post, who cares if it's a dupe! Recommend

Russ Hold is doing the work of the founding fathers extended toi our modern attempts at a democracy. Right now, his bill is the best we've got. That should be priority # 2 or 3 of the House and Senat leadership.

Let's make it happen.

[Wilms]

2. kick n/t