E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines

E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines
Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus 2005-10-03

A federally funded group of voting system experts called on the United States' Election Assistance Commission, which oversees the nation's state-run elections, to revamp its recommended process for evaluating the security of electronic voting devices.

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E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines 2005-10-03
Todd Knarr (1 replies)

I'm not sure we need open-source code in the machines so much as we need a system overall where we don't need to trust the machines to determine whether the results are accurate. We didn't see many problems in the 2004 elections, true, but that just means we didn't see many problems, not that there ...

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Re: E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines 2005-10-06
Phil Karn, Sr. (1 replies)

I propose a three part suggestion to support the Reliable and

Auditable goals of Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and

Transparent Elections.

1. After voting, regardless of the machine used, I would take

home a serially numbered(1) receipt of my entire ballot.(2)

2. The next d...

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Re: Re: E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines 2005-10-10
Anonymous (1 replies)

I wouldn't do any of those things, especially the first. In the US at least we've a tradition of secret ballots so that nobody can coerce voters or punish them based on the way they vote. It works because nobody can see how they're voting while in the booth, and after they deposit their ballot there...

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Re: Re: Re: E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines 2005-10-13
Phil Karn, Sr

Anon makes two good points which I admit I did not think of. I did

mention several ways that secrecy could be enhanced, but I do admit

that that was not my main thrust. However, I believe that the certain

large benefit of a verifiable and honestly counted ballot out weights

the smaller less prob...

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E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines 2005-10-04
Anonymous (1 replies)

I don't think it should be open source; however, there should be independent auditors from every party to review the code. No way should this software be closed completely. It's too easy to put malicous easter eggs, so to speak, through out the code. All it would take is a few lines of code in th...

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Re: E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines 2005-10-04
Anonymous

I agree fully.

Of course, "every party" means everyone; anything short of that leaves it open to claims of bias. So you have a conundrum.

But closed-source software only offers one security advantage, and it's a flimsy one: malicious parties outside the circle of trust, who can't obtain the ...

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E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines 2005-10-04
Anonymous

"We believe that open inspection must be controlled and managed to prevent reckless claims from being made against our system for the protection of the public and our customers."

Whether this person is incompetent, or lying, or both, is beyond my right or ability to judge. But I'll say with conf...

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E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines 2005-10-05
Jody Holder

While I applaud the reporting on the comments issued by ACCURATE, I must take issue with the single link regarding the report of very few problems that occurred in the November, 2004 election. Notice that the date of the linked-to article was immediately after the election. Too soon to accurately ga...

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E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines 2005-10-05
Jerry Berkman

You say that electronic voting have few problems

last November. But since there was no paper trail,

it was impossible to see if the vote was counted

correctly and impossible to detect properly done

transfers of votes....

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E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines 2005-10-07
Anonymous

I think it would be more accurate to say that the November 2004 election appeared to manifest only small problems with e-voting machines. The mainstream news didn't follow up on many, many reports of machines misbehaving. Anyway, how can we be sure that only minor problems occured when **the systems...

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