Interesting People mailing list archives
more on WaPo: Webb's name cut off from voting machines
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:59:32 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <joehall () gmail com> Date: October 24, 2006 1:38:33 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: Serge Egelman <egelman () cs cmu edu> Subject: Re: [IP] WaPo: Webb's name cut off from voting machines Reply-To: joehall () pobox com On 10/24/06, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
(Serge said) I'm not positive about this, but I'd wager that these are probably thestrongest Democratic-leaning localities in Virginia. This seems pretty fishy. What's even more outrageous is that knowing of the bug two weeksbefore the election, they say it can't be fixed.
If they say it affects all candidates with long names, that doesn't sound biased to any particular party. What they should do is just shorten the candidate's name on the ballot definitions (templates for e-voting ballots) for candidates with long names. The fact that they can't fix bugs close to an election may sound outrageous, but it is actually a problem with how these machines are vetted for use. Most states -- and I believe Virginia is one -- require that voting systems they use have to be federally certified. That means that an independent testing authority* -- an accredited testing laboratory -- must certify each version of software, hardware and the associated documentation before the system can be used. When a change needs to be made, the certification process *is* more simple, but still involves a good deal of delta-testing and regression testing and can be both expensive and time-consuming. It would be very hard for a change to the system's software to make it through that process before election day. I would be wary of a decision that required the manufacturer to make the change and bypass certification... some sort of analysis by independent experts of the patch and what bugs or vulnerabilities might have been introduced must be done. -Joe * Note, many of us in the NSF ACCURATE center have serious concerns with how the current certification process works (or doesn't work). -- Joseph Lorenzo Hall PhD Student, UC Berkeley, School of Information <http://josephhall.org/> ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
Current thread:
- more on WaPo: Webb's name cut off from voting machines David Farber (Oct 24)