Tag: Voting

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley will announce today that as of 2006, all e-voting machines in the state must provide a voter-verifiable paper trail, according to an L.A. Times story by Allison Hoffman and Tim Reiterman. This is yet another sign that the push for sensible e-voting safeguards is gaining momentum. [Link credit: Siva…

Opponents of unauditable e-voting technology often talk about the threat of fraud. They worry that somebody will compromise a voting machine or will corrupt the machines’ software, to steal an election. We should worry about fraud. But just as important, and more likely, is the possibility that software bugs will cause a miscount that gives…

As expected, an independent study of the Diebold electronic voting machines purchased by the state of Maryland has found that “The system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise.” The study was commissioned by the state and performed by SAIC. A Washington Post story by Brigid Schulte reports that…

To a technologist, law and policy debates sometimes seem to be held in a kind of bizarro world, where words and concepts lose their ordinary meanings. Some technologists never get used to the bizarro rules, but some us of do catch on eventually. One of the bizarro rules is that you should be happy when…

Eugene Volokh offers an interesting post on “guided voting,” a simple idea with important implications. Voters often rely on the recommendations of others, such as political parties, interest groups, or well-informed individuals. For example, if I have a friend on the local school board and I trust her judgment about school-board matters, I might follow…

Recently, researchers at John Hopkins and Rice Universities reported serious security flaws in electronic voting technology sold by Diebold. I haven’t yet had a chance to read the paper carefully, but I know all of the authors and I would be very surprised if they are wrong. Eric Rescorla discusses the paper and Diebold’s response.…

My Congressman, Rep. Rush Holt, has introduced an important e-voting bill, H.R. 2239. The bill would address the serious concerns raised by a broad coalition of computer scientists (including me) about the security and trustworthiness of electronic voting systems. The bill would do three main things. First, it would require that voting systems generate a…