Barbara Simons: Elections Must Be Secure-Reliable-Accessible & Verifiable

[kpete]

Statement of Barbara Simons for the Committee on House Administration Hearing on Electronic Voting
By Barbara Simons, Association for Computing Machinery
October 02, 2006

We must make our elections more secure, reliable, accessible, and verifiable.

We all want elections that are reliable, secure, accessible, and trusted by the public. Given known security risks, the possibility that software bugs could generate incorrect election results, or that computerized voting machines may fail during an election, we cannot trust that the results recorded in a paperless voting machine accurately reflect the will of the voters. Providing a voter verified paper trail is a significant step toward mitigating these risks, restoring transparency to the election, and ensuring the public’s trust.

Because paperless Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) devices cannot be audited, many states have mandated that DREs produce a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) or voter verified paper ballot (VVPB). We have seen that careful and well engineered implementation of this requirement is critical. Some of the most widely used DREs have retrofitted their machines by adding reel-to-reel thermal printers. Unfortunately, there have been a number of problems with these continuous roll printers, including jamming, privacy concerns, and difficulties conducting a manual count of the paper.

There are high quality printers that are much more reliable, that produce easy to read text, and that could print VVPBs that are easy to count manually. Our voting systems should not depend on mediocre equipment.

Precinct based optical scan voting systems also produce VVPBs, since by definition the optical scan ballot is verified by the voter when he or she marks the ballot. Accessible optical scan ballots can be produced using tactile ballots or electronic ballot marking systems. Optical scan ballots can be manually counted and used to audit elections.

more at:
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1835&Itemid=26