Interesting Notes From the EAC Meeting

[Wilms]

Thad Hall blogs from the event where many of the comments seem to be about how swell everyone and everything are.

But I fished out a few notes Thad makes of NIST Representitive, John Wack's comments.

To me, it sounds like NIST is going "alpha" having realized that the dog it inherited (the TGDC) has an aggression problem.


Election Updates: EAC Talks

May 24, 2006

by Thad Hall

I am sitting in the Standards Board and the Board of Advisors lunch and decided to blog the speeches. Here are summaries of the EAC commission member talks that occurred over lunch.

snip

(R)epresentative of NIST, John Wack:

He stated that NIST is to assist the EAC to develop standards for electronic voting equipment... There are many issues in voting and some were not completely addressed...They are doing more to reach out to vendors because they are not represented in the process formally...

There is a 2007 version of the standards that is being developed. Each requirement in 2007 will be linked to a specific test that can be conducted. The standards will be written to resemble an IEEE standard, but with a clear effort to make the writing clear and usable for public readers. There is a final tradeoff between security, usability, and system cost. Systems have to be affordable but also secure and usable. They are also doing assessments of potential test labs for voting systems. The EAC will receive recommendations from NIST about potential labs that could do voting system testing.

snip

In talking with the EAC, he would like to get better feedback in order to make more rapid progress. He would like the Standards Board and Advisory Committee’s to create a committee to work with NIST to ensure its work is real and accurate.

snip

http://electionupdates.caltech.edu/2006/05/eac-talks.html

[Kip Humphrey]

1. They are doing more to reach out to vendors - Makes me sick!!!

[Wilms]

2. I had a different idea on that.

Perhaps an open relationship is better.

Let the TGDC (once it's cleaned up) work with the vendors to develop systems (even though I'd prefer we avoid them altogether).

Right now, the standards are being written for/by the vendors. That's not the product of an open relationship.