Considering Computer Voting

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 16:31:20 -0500
From: John Schwartz <jswatz () nytimes com>
Subject: Fyi
To: "David J. Farber" <farber () cis upenn edu>



Hi, Dave -- I know you've been watching the e-voting issue, and thought
you'd want to see this piece.

John



http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/technology/15neco.html?8hpib

NEW ECONOMY

Considering Computer Voting
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: December 15, 2003

Gaithersburg, Md. HIGH-TECH voting is getting a low-tech backstop: paper.
Most new voting machines are basically computers with touch screens instead
of keyboards. Their makers promise that the new machines will simplify
voting and forever end the prospect of pregnant and hanging chads. But as
the market for computerized voting equipment has intensified, a band of
critics has emerged, ranging from the analytical to the apoplectic.
Advertisement

The opponents of the current machines, along with the people who make them
and election officials who buy them, gathered to spar in Gaithersburg, a
Washington suburb, last Wednesday and Thursday, at a symposium
optimistically titled, "Building Trust and Confidence in Voting Systems."

The critics complained that the companies were putting democracy into a
mystery box, and that the computer code for the systems was not written to
standards that ensure security. Critics are uneasy about the major vendors'
political ties, and they worry about what a malevolent insider or a hacker
could do to an election. But above all, they complain that few of the new
machines allow voters to verify their votes, whether with a paper receipt or
another method, an idea favored by computer scientists including David L.
Dill of Stanford University.

The companies generally respond that the lever-style, mechanical voting
machines offer no such backup, either. The critics counter that the
computerized systems are the first to need voter verification methods.

Now a growing number of election officials and politicians seem to be
agreeing with the skeptics. Last week, Nevada said it was buying voting
machines for the entire state, and it demanded paper receipts for all
voters. Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller said he received an
overwhelming message from voters that they did not trust electronic voting.
"Frankly, they think the process is working against them, rather than
working for them," Mr. Heller, a Republican, said. Last month, the
California secretary of state, Kevin Shelley said that his state would
require all touch-screen voting machines to provide a "voter-verified paper
audit trail."

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, has introduced a bill
that would require a paper trail and security standards for voting machines.
Her bill is similar to an earlier entry sponsored by a fellow Democrat,
Representative Rush D. Holt of New Jersey. "What's required for money
machines should be required for voting machines," Senator Clinton said in
introducing the bill. "We must restore trust in our voting, and we must do
it now."

Rebecca Mercuri, an expert on voting technology who is affiliated with
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and attended the symposium, said the
tone of the discussion had changed from acrimony and accusation to the
beginnings of civil conversation. The old corporate view, she said, was that
"we have the safest, most secure voting machine - and by the way, it's a
secret," Ms. Mercuri said. But that "is not going to provide the trust and
confidence that we need," she said.

 <snip>

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