News & Insights
We’re Making History in Real Time.
Our timely insights share informed perspectives on the rapidly evolving story of Election Technology, as it unfolds.
RSA Conference: More 2008 Election Tech Lessons Learned - Auditing
Election audit was the second lessons-learned topic from the RSA panel that I wrote about earlier. I illustrate with two examples.
RSA Conference Panel: Lessons Learned from 2008 Election Technology
I spoke in a panel at the RSA Conference yesterday, on the topic of lessons learned in 2008 about voting technology. I thought I'd use this blog to share my remarks, but even though we each spoke for only 5 minutes before the question and answer period, I covered three areas of lessons learned; so I'll cover them in separate blog posts on each topic of (1) Usability lessons (2) Audit lessons (3) Transparency lessons.
E-voting and Insider Threats: e-Election Fraud?
I found a remarkably good, plain-English description of the insider threats of digital voting systems, and with an intriguing title: Computer Experts Warn of Sophisticated Dagdag Bawas with Automated Polls.
Mixed Bag: Voting System Vendors' Rhetoric on Open Source
The current voting system vendors recently released a paper on election technology and open source. As a pleasant surprise, it is a mixed bag, in that much of the report's rhetoric is asspecious as previously seen, but there are also signs of the vendors taking steps towards comprehending what the voting system market would be like, with open source digital voting technology.
More Humbolt Election Tech Weirdness: Premier Huffs
Well, I am sorry to say that I have to make an exception to my avoidance of casting voting system vendors in a bad light -- in this case Premier Systems (formerly Diebold). I was rather proud of PS(fD) when they owned up to the "ballot dropping" software problem (paper ballots scanned and apparently counted, but the first few not actually counted, and no log record of the deletion) that was discovered in the post-election audit conducted in Humboldt County by registrar Read More
Minnesota: Five 9s of Success
I'd like to set the record straight on Minnesota's handling of their November 2008 close election for U.S. Senate. It's not a debacle, it's a miracle. And it's no longer a recount, it's a series of court cases.
Kentucky: Election Fraud and E-voting
Several election officials in Clay County, Kentucky, have been arrested and indicted on Federal charges for alleged activities that many would refer to as "election fraud" but also come under the heading of conspiracy and racketeering. If true, it is a very unpleasant story, and one that illustrates the real (though apparently rare) risks of elections being tampered with by insiders.
No "Security By Obscurity" for Voting, Please
I have to confess to being appalled by the number of times recently that I have heard people talk about potential benefits of "security by obscurity" for voting systems. It's one of those bad old ideas that just won't die: if you hide the inner workings (source code) of a complex device (a voting system), that makes it harder for an adversary to break (hack, steal elections).
New York Times: Elections "Still Broken" -- Especially Registration
The recent New York Times editorial "Still Broken" is well worth the read, especially for its significant focus on dysfunction in the voter registration systems -- something that often gets second billing to recollections of hanging chad and recent vote-dropping voting machine stories.
Mini-Minnesota in Virginia
I'd like to call your attention to this week's electile dysfunction news, which is about a mini-Minnesota situation in Fairfax County, Virginia. I think it's instructive because it illustrates how some problems with "paperless" voting are actually quite similar to a more old-fashioned form of voting, "paper only" voting, and a mooted new-fangled kind of voting, Internet voting.
How to Test Voting Systems?
I got a great and deceptively simple question recently: what guidelines should be used for testing of voting machines?
"How Do I Know that This Voting Machine is the Good One?"
It never ceases to amaze me how often, and in what varied circumstances, I meet people who are not only quite clued in about election technology reform, but also surprising aware of some of the devils that lurk in the details. Today's devil: "field validation" of voting devices, or: if I went to vote in a precinct, and someone told me I was about to vote on the wonderful new trustworthy voting system that I had heard about, how would I know that that was the device I was about to use?
Internet Voting: Perils and Summary
No, I am not going to lecture on why Internet voting is bad for half a dozen different reasons. In fact, Internet voting is both a horribly loaded term, and also a general topic that is not germane to our current work at OSDV -- which is technologically fixing the election technology mess that we are in, without also trying to change the way elections work.
Trusting Neither People, Paper, or Computers: Hybrid Voting Scheme
In a previous posting, I referred to paper ballots as part of a recipe for election procedures that provide provide integrity and assurance by not relying solely on either computers or people to operate perfectly. As promised, here is some more info, especially important because there seems to be an increasing trend towards a "hybrid" style of election operations with both paper ballots and a variant of computerized voting.
Oregon Elections in the Digital Age: Please Start at the Beginning
Oregon is one of several states that this month have legislative activity that's starting to look at the phrase "Internet voting". Wired Oregon reports on Attempts to Bring Elections into Digital Age as a pair of bills, one for online voting, and one for online voter registration. But the reference to the recent report on the Pew Center on the States is a bit misleading.
Open Source and Disclosed Source: Both Good, but Different
Well, the issue of "source code disclosure" just keeps coming back at us. Here is the latest variant that needs some de-confusion: how are open source practices different from proprietary-systems vendors who voluntarily choose to disclose the source code of their software?
Policy-Driven Design
Live from NASED, want to pass along a comment about the engineering realities of a Digital Public Works Project, in the midst of listening to Congressional staffers discuss what's up on the Hill regarding election reform legislation. I just tweeted about the likelihood of making election day a federal holiday (its real and that should make our friends happy), but related comments on the panel sparks another observation.
The Real Stakeholders in How America Votes
Greetings All-
I'm blogging live from the National Association of State Elections Directors Conference, Day-2. And you can follow us Twittering live from the conference too (@osdv). A quick comment here; perhaps more as the Day progresses.
Transparency, Open Source, and Paper Ballots
I previously reported that "transparency" was key word for people's positive response to our our recent DC demonstration of our digital voter registration system (DVRS). There is also a similar transparency issue with voting systems, and voting systems also have another transparency issue around paper ballots; and then there is the issue of open source. Here's the how the 3-way connection works.
Where Open Source Requirements Fail in Voting Technology
It may surprise some readers to learn thatthere is one election technology reform situation where we are not in favor of open source as a solution. Yes, you read that right.