Secure Electronic Voting New Zealand voting survey, post-election 1981 : user's guide for the machine-readable data file Help America Vote Act of 2002 : conference report (to accompany H.R. 3295) (SuDoc Y 1.1/8:107-730) Alternative ballot techniques : hearing before the Subcommittee on Elections of the Committee on House Administration, House of Representatives, One Hundred Third Congress, second session, September 22, 1994, Washington, DC (SuDoc Y 4.H 81/3:B 21) The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2004

• Use of voting machines. ...
• Whenever the board of supervisors of any county or the governing authorities of any municipality shall purchase or rent voting machines that meet the requirements of this article, such voting machines may be used at all elections held in such county or municipality, or in any part thereof, for voting, registering and counting votes cast at such elections. In providing voting machines, the board of supervisors is hereby empowered to purchase or rent voting machines for each voting precinct in the entire county, including those located within the municipality, or, in the discretion of the board, voting machines may be purchased or rented only for those voting precincts located outside the limits of the municipalities located in said county. The board of supervisors of any county and the governing authorities of any municipality may jointly purchase or rent voting machines for all of the voting precincts in the entire county. Whenever voting machines have been purchased or rented by either the board of supervisors or the governing authorities of a municipality, for use at voting precincts within the county or within the municipality, said voting machines may be used at said voting precincts in all elections, and the officials in charge of the election to be held shall cause the voting machines to be prepared and used at such election as provided for herein. Voting machines of different kinds may be adopted for different counties within the state.
• Voting machines may be used in combination with paper ballots in any election at the discretion of and under rules and regulations set up by the officials in charge of the election.

• Dodd Unveils Electronic Voting Machines.
• Dodd looks on during the demonstration of the new electronic voting machines. ...
• Senator Dodd joined Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, and other state and local leaders at a press conference to unveil electronic voting machines which will be used in a demonstration project during this November’s municipal elections in eight Connecticut towns.
• 8 billion over the next three years to help states replace and renovate voting equipment, train poll workers, educate voters, upgrade voter lists, make polling places more accessible for the disabled, and for other election administration purposes. The law requires all states to upgrade their voting machines by 2006. ...
• Dodd speaking at the press conference unveiling the new voting machines.

• Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems, Board of Examiners for .
• Requests for certification of voting equipment and voting booths are submitted to the secretary of state, who then notifies the Board of Examiners of the time and place for the examination and testing of the equipment. ... Only voting machines or systems and voting booths approved by the Board of Examiners may be used at Iowa elections. ...

• The new electronic (touch screen) voting machines being installed across the US for the 2004 election are easily tampered with, making massive vote fraud simple and undetectable. These machines are also apparently less reliable than the old-fashioned paper and mechanical voting machines. With electronic voting machines, there's no paper, so no recount is possible. ...
• The three companies who make the majority of all voting machines (Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia) refuse to allow security experts analyze the software to see if it is secure, however, recent leaks from Diebold have allowed some of their code to be analyzed, to dismaying results. ...
• 2239) before congress to require paper audit trails, and for the voting software to be open and secure. ...
• Footage of a video taken in a closed-door meeting concerning Diebold machines in Texas. ...
• 1) Diebold voting systems produce no audit trail - paper or otherwise - which can be verified. 2) Diebold has a track record of absurdly shoddy security in their voting systems(if one can even honestly use the word "security" for it) includingback doors in their databases which allow random users to alter primary votingrecord databases. ... 5) In fact, most of the major voting machine companies have strong ties to theBush administration. ... When the proper chipwas installed in the computerized voting machine the correct results were revealed:two Democratic victories. ... what do we have here other than the obvious denialby mainstream America? We've got a CIA family, their corporate supporters workingwith CIA contractors at Battellein order to bring flawedelectronic voting to the U. ...
• If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines .
• Voting Fraud in Volusia Co. ...

• Firm picked for voting machines.
• Secretary of State Dean Heller announced today he would sign a contract worth an estimated $8 million to purchase touch-screen voting machines from Sequoia Voting Systems, and he will require each unit to have a paper record for recounts.
• The machines will be installed in Washoe and the rural counties in time for the 2004 election, he said. He also issued an order that punch-card voting machines will no longer be used after Sept. ...
• The move comes after weeks of study and debate over the move to electronic voting systems. Sequoia won out over machines made by Diebold, which has made a strong push to win the contract.
• Sequoia and Diebold had been competing for the contract for about 1,800 machines. ...
• He said he believed the Diebold electronic voting machine "represents a legitimate threat to the integrity of the election process. ... " Heller said that having one statewide voting system will also make it easier to have a statewide voter registration system by the 2006 election.
• Some county clerks had pushed for Heller to allow them to choose the machines. ... He said the decision to go with Sequoia will mean that Clark County will be able to help rural counties if they run into problems; voting units can be switched to a county that encounters trouble and election personnel would be trained on the same system.
• Diebold's bid would have required replacing all the machines in the state, including the 3,500 relatively new Sequoia voting units in Clark County.
• He said some machines in Clark County have the printers or voter verifiable receipts. ...
• The voter is not able to physically touch the receipt at any time during the voting process. The printed record is rolled up on a spool so that no one can see any person's voting choice. ...
• But Heller said voter confidence is critical to the integrity of the voting process.

• E-voting .
• IEEE Members & Security Professionals: Make Your Voice Heard on E-Voting Machines.
• UPDATE: On September 23, EFF learned that the IEEE's flawed e-voting standard (P1583) was rejected by its own working group in a 13-6 vote. ...
• Flawed E-Voting Standard Sent Back to Drawing Board .
• I write to express my deep concern about the IEEE Voting Equipment Standards Project 1583 and SCC 38 and to urge IEEE to immediately stop the balloting on both. ... Please note that I have great respect for the IEEE and believe that, if handled correctly, the IEEE standard for electronic voting machines could provide much needed assurance to people around the world. ... First, I am deeply concerned that the draft standard that has been put to ballot does not reflect the current scientific consensus about the security and other performance requirements for electronic voting equipment. For example, one of the most important goals of voting equipment standards is to ensure that the equipment has accurately recorded a voter's intention, something that only the voter herself can confirm. A large number of scientists and security experts have raised this basic issue, and have embraced a requirement that voting machines be voter verified or verifiable. One such method that is already available from multiple election machine companies is a provision that the machines produce a paper ballot for each voter that allows a voter to see a summary of her votes to confirm them. ... " I am concerned about reports that the leaders of these committees, who have reportedly been rushing the process, are affiliated with the vendors of electronic voting machines. Again, given the paramount role that voting machines play in democracy, the IEEE should take extra care to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interests. ... Membership in the Committee especially, should be carefully balanced to avoid the actual, or the appearance of, control by those affiliated with voting machine vendors. ... Require that the IEEE standard reflect the current views of the necessary security for voting machines and, at a minimum, that the standard include a requirement that voting be voter verifiable, with at least the same security level as current voter verifiable paper ballots. ...

• E-voting .
• Secretary of State Shelley Announces Electronic Voting Machine Requirement.
• California Takes Lead in Protecting Democratic Voting.
• Sacramento, CA - Responding to a raft of reports detailing flaws in electronic voting systems, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley today announced that he is requiring all electronic voting systems purchased by California counties to provide a paper printout to allow voters to verify their votes and auditors to verify election results.
• The Secretary of State is responsible for certifying all voting machines used for elections within the state of California.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has urged election officials and legislators to require that electronic voting machines use publicly reviewed software and generate a paper record, which would allow voters to verify their votes as well as create a "paper trail" for potential recounts.
• "Secretary of State Shelley has taken a courageous and important step in response to the growing public concern about the security of voting machines," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. ...
• "We hope that California can continue to lead the country and the world in implementing secure electronic voting standards," added EFF Activist Ren Bucholz.
• "By requiring a voter verified paper trail, the Secretary of State has taken a critical step toward preserving the integrity of the voting process in the wake of new technologies that change the ways in which we vote," commented California Voter Foundation President Kim Alexander.
• According to the California Voter Foundation, 9% of California counties used electronic voting systems in the October 2003 recall election, and 32-40% will likely use electronic voting systems in the upcoming March 2004 elections.
• California Secretary of State statement on e-voting paper trail requirement (Adobe PDF format) .
• EFF E-Voting page .
• EFF and Stanford law clinic sue Diebold electronic voting company .
• Statistics on voting systems in California .
• Security researchers discover huge flaws in e-voting system .
• Wired Article on electronic voting in Alameda county .

• Johnson County officials confident voting machines free of Ohio flaws .
• Topeka — Kansas election officials say they are confident in the trustworthiness of touchscreen voting machines in Johnson County -- the state's most populous county -- which are the same kind of machines that have raised alarms in Ohio.
• Earlier this month, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell delayed implementation of certain electronic voting machines after a review reported security flaws that could allow election fraud.
• "I will not place these voting devices before Ohio's voters until identified risks are corrected and system security is bolstered," Blackwell had said.
• One of those cited by the review was a touchscreen machine made by Diebold Election Systems, which is the kind used both in Johnson County and for advance voting in Lyon County, the Kansas Secretary of State's Office reported.
• Connie Schmidt, election commissioner of Johnson County, said she had been monitoring the debate about the Diebold machines, but so far hadn't learned of anything that would warrant reconsideration of their use in Johnson County.
• Some of the major concerns, she said, have been over voting machines hooked up to the Internet, or where results are transmitted over the telephone via computer modem. None of those conditions exist for the Johnson County machines, she said.
•  E-voting raises election fraud fears (8-15-03).
•  Florida town inaugurates touchscreen voting machines (9-5-01).
•  Center for Voting and Democracy.
•  Black Box Voting--Ballot-tampering in the 21st Century.
• The touchscreen machines were used countywide in Johnson County for the first time during the August 2002 primaries. At the time, more than 10,000 Johnson County voters completed a comment card about the voting machines, and 99 percent gave them a favorable rating, Schmidt reported.
• Jesse Borjon, a spokesman for the Kansas Secretary of State's Office, agreed that the machines and procedures used in Johnson County and Lyon County were sound. The office has discussed whether to conduct an independent review of election machines and procedures, but hasn't made a decision yet, he said.

• Voting machine fails inspection.
• University researchers delivered a serious blow to the current crop of electronic voting systems in an analysis of one such system's source code in which they concluded that a voter could cast unlimited ballots without detection. ...
• Using an earlier version of the source code that powers machines manufactured by Diebold Election Systems, the security experts--three from Johns Hopkins University and a colleague from Rice University--performed an audit and found numerous security holes. ...
• "Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts," said the researchers in a paper published Wednesday on the Internet, concluding that "as a society, we must carefully consider the risks inherent in electronic voting, as it places our very democracy at risk. ...
• The issues also come as direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems are taking off. ...
• "You can't run voting machines on Windows. ...
• By bringing a stack of valid cards to the voting booth, a person could cast several votes. ...
• David Heller, the project manager for Maryland's voting system implementation, adopted a wait-and-see attitude. ... 6 million deal with Diebold for the company to provide Maryland's voting systems. ...
• If the voting machine's tally doesn't match the operator's count, then the votes on that machine would be thrown out and those voters allowed to recast their ballots. ...
• Tadayoshi Kohno, a researcher at Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University and an author of the paper, said the secrecy that surrounds the creation and certification of electronic voting machines almost ensures that the systems will not be programmed securely.
• "Independent security researchers need to verify and look at the source code of electronic voting systems," he said. ... I think that as a society, we are moving too fast toward electronic voting and we need to rethink things more thoroughly. ...

• Voting machines need paper trails.
• Secretary of State Kevin Shelley will issue directions to local officials who are buying touch-screen voting machines and other devices known as ``Direct Recording Electronic'' (DRE) equipment. If he honors the position he holds, he'll order voting officials to take many more steps to ensure voter trust in these systems than they've been willing to take so far.
• Specifically, he should tell them that they must, as part of the verification process, create what's called a ``paper trail'' -- a printout that the voter can look at to verify that the ballot was recorded according to his or her wishes, a document that could later be used for recounts and audits to ensure that the machines had worked as designed.
• Yet some people who normally take the side of underdogs, who are passionate about voting rights and the accuracy of elections, are making a common mistake.
• Local officials seemed determined at first to proceed with machines that don't have a paper trail, but then punted the matter to Shelley when he appointed a task force last February to examine the issues.
• htm), the task force found flaws in the testing and certification process for DRE machines, and was adamant about the need for some kind of verification. That was progress from the see-no-evil stance we'd been getting in the past from voting officials, the companies making the machines and others.
• Someday, hopefully before a debacle sours people on voting entirely, they will be seen as prescient.
• The companies that make these machines, and their supporters, insist all kinds of safeguards have been built in and that the systems will work as advertised.
• I believe Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security in San Jose, who says he's ``terrified'' about the prospect of voting with the current lineup of paperless DRE machines. ...
• I believe Ed Felten, computer science professor at Princeton University, who calls these machines ``black boxes'' -- opaque to scrutiny and potentially subject, as Schneier notes, to tampering.
• Visit his Verified Voting Web site (www. ...
• What I don't necessarily believe is that DRE machines have already been used to rig elections -- yet. ...
• issues/voting/details.
• The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights has its heart squarely in the right place on voting rights, but like the ACLU branch it gives too much trust where trust hasn't been earned.

• 1 Silicon Valley Computer Scientists Team Up To Demonstrate Free Voting Machine.
• Scientists and engineers from the Silicon Valley have started a project aimed at developing a PC based voting machine they claim will be easier to use, more tamper-resistant, and cheaper than commercially available voting machines.
• Computerized voting offers many advantages over traditional systems, including,.
• High quality refurbished PC's that are only one generation old exist in great abundance and have more than enough power to make great voting machines. ... Less than 10 percent of these PCs would be needed for all the voting booths in the U. ...
• The concept has already been demonstrated in Australia where, in 2001, the Australian Capital Territory government commissioned the development of open source software to run on trailing-edge PCs set up in polling places as voting machines.
• Jones, a University of Iowa computer science professor and world-renowned expert on voting technology, is taking a very active role as advisor and mentor.
• Jay Tefertiller, Ben Strednak, and Steve Gardner of ISIS Technology (Oklahoma City) are developing the non-proprietary hardware design, and working on establishing a trade association, tentatively called the "Open Voting Consortium," that will establish and maintain high standards for the open voting hardware.
• Developers want to demonstrate a voting system where all components are open for public inspection and debate. ...
• The demonstration standalone voting machines will be set up at strategic locations, for example, in the Silicon Valley area and Sacramento. ...
• EVM project proponents hope that this successful demonstration project will lead to a very large well-funded academic study that will capitalize on other efforts to bring about a modern, reliable, affordable, uniform, and fully auditable voting system. While designed to be certified in the United States first, it will be built from the ground up as an international voting machine. The larger study will include not only the development of voting machine software, but all software necessary for election administration, and an Election Rules Database that will document all election rules in effect in all jurisdictions in the United States.

• National Semiconductor and Unisys Equip Brazil with New Voting Machines for Fast and Accurate Election Results in the Fall.
• May 6, 2002 - To help ensure fast and error-free ballot counting and election results, National Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE: NSM) and Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) will provide Brazil with 52,000 state-of-the-art electronic voting machines for Brazil’s national elections this fall.   Powered by National's Geode™ technology, the new voting machines feature an integrated screen and keyboard in a small 30 X 40 X 20 cm form factor. ...
• Electronic voting machines have been used in Brazil since 1996. ...   In areas as remote as the Amazon jungle where electricity is not available, the machines operate on batteries for more than 12 hours. ...
•   "The Brazilian voting machine is a perfect use of thin-client computing technology for government applications that need improved efficiency and productivity. ...
• The voting machine, running Microsoft's Windows CE operating system, is extremely easy to navigate. ...
• Currently, all votes are cast by electronic voting machines in Brazil, the largest nation in South America.   The newer and easier-to-use Unisys machines will enable Brazilians to cast votes more efficiently.
• Powering the Urna Eletronica 2002 electronic voting machine is National's Geode GX1 integrated processor, along with analog solutions from National.   Unisys will be responsible for the maintenance of these voting machines during the elections.
• With the addition of the new machines, the country will have 405,000 voting machines nationwide, more than 80% of which are based on National’s Geode technology. ...

•  VOTING MACHINES AND INSTRUCTIONS .
• Voting Process.
• Full-Face Ballot Electronic Voting Machines.
• Touch-Screen Electronic Voting Machines.
• Optical Scan Voting Machines.
• VOTING PROCESS.
•   The Clerk will complete a voting receipt showing your precinct number, then give you the receipt and direct you to either an AVC (full-face ballot) or Edge (touch-screen) voting machine to vote.   All voting machines will have Spanish and English ballots and instructions.
• FULL-FACE BALLOT ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES.
• Description:  Most election day polling places use full-face ballot, direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines. These voting machines electronically record your choices when you press the CAST VOTE button. ...
• How to Vote on a Full-Face Ballot Voting Machine:.
• Cast Your Ballot:  Once you press the orange CAST VOTE button, you are finished voting.
• TOUCH-SCREEN ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES.
• Description:  All Clark County early voting locations use touch-screen voting machines.   Election day polling places also use touch-screen machines along with the full-face ballot machines. ...   These machines provide the option to vote in Spanish as well as an audio voting option for the visually impaired. ...

•      Criticism of Electronic Voting Machines’ Security is Mounting .
•      As presidential primary season approaches, a debate is raging about electronic voting -- and IT professionals and computer scientists are among the loudest critics. ...
•      Manufacturers of the latest generation of electronic touch-screen voting devices, known as direct recording electronic (DRE) machines, are poised to reap the rewards of the spending spree. ...
•      Incidents of electronic voting machine malfunctions have fueled the fire, as have thorough security reviews of DREs commissioned recently by election officials in various states. ... , Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. ...
•      Meanwhile, six vendors -- those four plus Advanced Voting Solutions Inc. ...
•      Nilsson, who chairs the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility working group on voting, is scathing on the subject of poor software quality in DREs. ...
• The computer science professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia is often on the opposite side of the argument from e-voting skeptics, but even his opponents credit him with running, for the state of Georgia, what may be the most thorough voting machine inspection regime in the country. While Georgia's rigorous tests have discovered unreliable units before they could be used at the polls, Williams said he trusts the machines as far as is necessary within a total security framework. ...
•      "People are looking at the security of electronic voting machines from a purely technical point of view, but security is a combination of physical, legal and procedural measures," said Williams. ...
• , is a recent arrival to the electronic voting discussion: He said that prior to January 2003, he wasn't deeply involved in any policy debates. But about a year ago, "it occurred to me that people were buying these machines, and nobody was minding the store," Dill said. ...
• " But he maintains that verification can be provided without paper, and he has developed what he claims is a secure voting architecture that uses multiple redundant software components. ...
• | voting rights | environment | budget | children | politics | indigenous survival | energy | .

• "If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines" .
• Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the sudden rise of inaccurate exit polls happened around the same time corporate-programmed, computer-controlled, modem-capable voting machines began recording and tabulating ballots. ...
• You'd think in an open democracy that the government - answerable to all its citizens rather than a handful of corporate officers and stockholders - would program, repair, and control the voting machines. ... You'd think there would be a paper trail of the vote, which could be followed and audited if a there was evidence of voting fraud or if exit polls disagreed with computerized vote counts. ...
• Senator Chuck Hagel was the head of, and continues to own part interest in, the company that owns the company that installed, programmed, and largely ran the voting machines that were used by most of the citizens of Nebraska. ...
• Senate in 1996, his company's computer-controlled voting machines showed he'd won stunning upsets in both the primaries and the general election. ...
• What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. ...
• While many in Georgia expected a big win by Cleland, the computerized voting machines said that Chambliss had won. ...
• "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected," wrote Thomas Paine over 200 years ago. ...
• The company tied to Hagel even threatened her with legal action when she went public about his company having built the machines that counted his landslide votes. ...
• These corporations are taking over America, and they just about have control of our voting machines. ...
• As all this comes to light, many citizens and even a few politicians are wondering if it's a good idea for corporations to be so involved in the guts of our voting systems. ...
• Many citizens believe, however, that turning the programming and maintenance of voting over to private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their owners, officers, and stockholders, puts democracy itself at peril. ...
• When Bev Harris and The Hill's Alexander Bolton pressed the Chief Counsel and Director of the Senate Ethics Committee, the man responsible for ensuring that FEC disclosures are complete, asking him why he'd not questioned Hagel's 1995, 1996, and 2001 failures to disclose the details of his ownership in the company that owned the voting machine company when he ran for the Senate, the Director reportedly met with Hagel's office on Friday, January 25, 2003 and Monday, January 27, 2003. ...
• The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska, he said, are those made and programmed by the corporation formerly run by Hagel. ...
• "If you want to win the election," he finally said, "just control the machines. ...

• City to get high-tech voting machines.
• City officials hope to replace Philadelphia's mechanical-lever voting machines by signing a contract this month for a new $18. 5 million touch-screen electronic voting system. ...
•  Philadelphia officials say the easily portable machines are necessary to replace aging 900-pound voting booths that are increasingly hard to use and maintain and that rely on error-prone manual tabulation of votes. ...
•  "These machines are going to be a godsend for us," said Robert Lee, head of voter registration and a member of the committee that proposed their purchase. Lee called the machines "probably the most safe and accurate devices on the market. ...
•  The machines' critics say the main problem is a potential improvement they lack: an auditable paper trail that enables a voter to verify the accuracy of his or her own vote and allows a meaningful recount in a contested race. ...
•  "I actually think that they should suspend the purchase , and I am not alone in my belief," said Rebecca Mercuri, a Bryn Mawr College computer scientist whose research has focused on problems with computerized voting systems. ...
•  After the national furor over the disputed presidential vote in Florida, there have been widespread calls for inquiries into voting systems and new national standards. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology recently announced a joint initiative "to develop an easy-to-use, reliable, affordable and secure United States voting machine. ...
• Five of the best-known names in technology - Dell, Compaq, Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Unisys - each recently announced a foray into the voting-machine business. ...
•  "If we as a nation are looking at voting systems, and the City of Philadelphia goes and buys a new voting system, they're going to have a potentially obsolete voting system when the new standards come out," Mercuri said. ...
•  The current negotiations to purchase 3,526 Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines from Danaher Corp. ... , cap a process dating to 1995, when a city task force appointed after an absentee-voting scandal in the Second State Senatorial District recommended their purchase. ...
•  In one sense, disagreement over the new machines highlights a philosophical divide. ...
•  "Cities such as Philadelphia switched to voting machines precisely to eliminate the nuisance and potential for fraud that existed under paper balloting systems," the 1995 task force said. ...

• Voting.
• A Vote For New Voting Machines .
• Election years stir up ideas for getting more voters to vote - by mail, by phone, on the Internet, anything that might improve on the nation's dismal record of voting at designated polling places. ... It still votes on aging machines long since abandoned in the majority of America's precincts. ...
• In 1985, during the Koch Administration, the New York City Partnership called those old mechanical lever machines - then almost a quarter-century old - inefficient, costly to maintain and an obstacle to smooth elections. ...
• Yet, today, New York still has the lever machines it bought in 1962. Because machines like these have not been manufactured for almost 20 years, their continued operation depends on good maintenance, spare parts cannibalized from other machines, and a few prayers. ...
• Actually, the city contracted to purchase 7,000 electronic machines seven long years ago. ...
• In the early 1960's, when New York bought the machines it still uses, more than half of America's voters used the lever system. ...
• Punchcards were first used for voting in a Georgia primary election in 1964. ...
• The ballots for punchcard voting can handle multiple options because they are on pages which voters turn as they proceed through the vote. ...
• By contrast, lever machines like New York's can only handle three languages - English, Spanish and Chinese. And New York law requires that the city's lever machines display everything on one big sheet - all candidates, all parties, all issues. ...
• A more recent but fast-growing method for voting is optical scanning, which has been used for decades in standardized tests and lotteries. ...
• But New Yorkers who vote in a city polling place still vote on out-of-date machines that are now used by less than 20 percent of all voters in the country. ...
• Mayor Dinkins announced in 1992 the city was going to purchase new electronic machines from Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment, Inc. ... , which has supplied the machines for cities and counties in a dozen states. Electronic equipment produced by Sequoia and other manufacturers is used by about 9 percent of the voting population. ...

• WHEN Santa Clara County voters head to their voting places this November, they'll be greeted by a bank of gleaming new electronic voting machines--a high-tech voting video arcade. ...
• The touch-screen machines--small, free-standing, portable computers supported by silver folding legs--will appear reliable and efficient, the instructions easy and intuitive. ... They'll select their voting preferences by touching the boxes displayed on the 15-inch screen, and if they make a mistake, they can correct it. ...
• If candidates dispute the results, they'll have to take the word of a third party, namely the manufacturer of the voting machine, as to what the ballots said. This trend is hardly unique to the valley; new electronic voting techniques are being adopted throughout the country as anxieties spread over the fallibility of outdated voting systems. ...
• Santa Clara County supervisors are worried enough about electronic voting to take what some say is a token step: requiring 5 percent of the ballots to have a tamper-proof paper backup system. ...
• The company that the county has contracted with to make the touch-screen voting machines--Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems, one of the top U. ... manufacturers of electronic voting systems--claims its machines are tested, secure and error-free. ...
• But a growing cadre of voting-rights activists and a group of 1,200 computer scientists and technologists, led by Stanford University computer science professor David Dill, argue that the new generation of electronic voting machines are a time bomb for fraud and inaccuracy. ...
• "Election officials have promised for several years now the dream of paperless electronic voting," says Dill, who began the movement calling for safer electronic elections by drafting a resolution that is quickly gathering the signatures of prominent scientists and academics from Silicon Valley and nationwide. ...
• After the 2000 presidential election debacle in Florida, federal officials raced to revamp the country's use of paper-based and manual-lever voting systems. A 2002 law provided $4 billion to help states buy electronic voting machines, namely optical scanners and touch-screen machines. ...
• Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertified punch-card ballots in 2001, and in 2002 California voters approved $200 million in bonds to upgrade their voting systems. For their part, Santa Clara County supervisors decided that they'd rush to have electronic voting up and running by the November 2003 election, when voters will weigh in on municipal and school district races. ...
• The supervisors, following the advice of county staff, were weeks away from signing a $19 million contract with Sequoia Voting Systems, who beat out two other vendors, for 5,500 new touch-screen voting machines for the region's 1,000 precincts and 740,500 registered voters ($9. ...
• But as they were heading toward the finish line, Dill and several other highly regarded computer experts intervened with an urgent appeal: the new voting machines were dangerously vulnerable to programming error, equipment malfunction and malicious tampering, they stated. ...

• com / democracy / Electronic Voting Machines .
• Electronic Voting Machines.
• Google News search for "diebold voting machine".
• November 11, 2003 11:41 PM Electronic Voting Machines.
• The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn’t their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. ...
• So Bush will probably win if the country is covered with these balloting machines. ...
• Computer science departments at every major American university have spoken out about the dangers of paperless electronic voting systems, particularly the Diebold machines used to run the 2002 Congressional elections: .
• Security researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University announced today (24 July 2003) that they have discovered numerous serious security flaws in what they believe is one of the leading e-voting systems in the country -- the Diebold Electron Systems' e-voting terminal. ...
• The researchers also uncovered methods permitting voters to "trick" the e-voting machines into allowing them system administrator privileges or even terminating an election before tallying all legitimate votes. ...
• "EFF supports electronic voting, but this report indicates Diebold's e-voting system isn't ready for prime time," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn, who advised the security researchers. "This report describes how voters, election officials, insiders at e-voting companies, and even custodians at election locations could manipulate elections and defraud the public. ...
• "Only with open review, vigorous security testing, and a voter verifiable paper audit trail can the public have confidence that e-voting machines will provide an actual accounting of the will of the people," said EFF Activist Ren Bucholz. "We urge everyone who cares about democracy to support effective e-voting legislation. ...
• Concerned citizens can voice their support for Representative Holt's bill to require open source e-voting systems and voter verifiable paper audit trails. ...

• Computerized voting lacks paper trail, scholar warns .
• Warning of programming error, equipment malfunction and malicious tampering, computer scientists from around the country, led by Stanford Professor David Dill, say computerized voting machines should provide a voter-verifiable audit trail. ...
• "The problem is not really with computerized voting systems per se," Dill says. ...
• More than 110 computer scientists and technologists from universities and laboratories across the nation have signed Dill's "Resolution on Electronic Voting," which states that it is "crucial that voting equipment provide a voter-verifiable audit trail, by which we mean a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy by the voter before the vote is submitted, and is difficult or impossible to alter after it has been checked. ...
• Computerized voting has been a focus of discussion in many jurisdictions, especially since the Florida results of the 2000 presidential election spawned a movement to replace punch cards with high-tech systems. ... 31, a subcommittee of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors met to consider a recommendation from the County Registrar to purchase Sequoia direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines, which Dill says do not provide a voter-verifiable audit trail. ... Santa Clara is one of nine California counties under court order to replace punch-card voting systems by March 2004. ...
• Paperless, touch-screen voting machines are used by nearly one in five voting precincts nationwide. ...
• When voters use touch-screen machines, they walk into voting booths, touch screens to select candidates and check their results on the screens. Voters can make changes if they've made a mistake or if their machines have problems. ...
• is where we have the machines apparently working fine -- we have elections going smooth as silk -- and the only problem is that the wrong candidate was elected. ...
• While some voting equipment vendors and government officials say that paperless, computerized voting systems are reliable, Dill and his colleagues disagree. "Without a voter-verifiable audit trail, it is not practical to provide reasonable assurance of the integrity of these voting systems by any combination of design review, inspection, testing, logical analysis or control of the system development process," the resolution says. ...
• The resolution is being circulated at a time when many states and counties are seeking to upgrade their voting equipment. ...
• "Unfortunately, if available funds are spent on fatally flawed 'high-tech' voting equipment, it will be a long time before there is more funding to adopt truly superior voting technology," the statement says. ...
• In the future, Dill says, sophisticated voting equipment, certified by authorities, could be completely paperless and provide greater security and integrity than today's machines. ...

• The blue display below is called the Fraudulent Voting Machine. ... It shows why electronic "touchscreen" voting machines need to print a paper ballot with the voter's choices that the voter can verify before casting the ballot and leaving the booth. ... The VVPAT enables election people to perform independent audits after the election to verify that the electronic voting systems were working correctly. ...
• Is it realistic to demonstrate a program that works two different ways? Yes! If you read the news you know that at least one major manufacturer of voting systems does something similar -- they use one program during tests, and a different program during real elections. ...
• Voting machines are in the news because the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) offered large sums of money to the states to replace old lever-type and punched-card voting equipment with new systems. Many states are buying "Direct Recording Electronic" voting systems, called DREs. ...
• If fact, computer scientists warned Congress before HAVA passed that DRE computer technology -- by itself -- is NOT secure enough to be used in voting systems. ...
• An independent audit of an electronic voting system would require a printout of each voter's ballot that the voter can verify before he or she leaves the booth. ... When the election is over and the electronic voting machine produces its final tallies, an independent audit can be made by hand-counting the voter-verified paper ballots. ...
• Unless the voting system programmers are completely incompetent, all printouts at the end of the day will agree with the system's final vote tallies--whether those tallies are correct or wrong. ...
• This simple concept is recognized by all legitimate computer systems --except electronic voting systems! .
• Electronic voting systems that are built without the capacity for independent audit are insecure by design--and should not be used. ...
• It is time to demand that our voting technology give us what exists in other computer areas -- accessible and secure equipment that ordinary people can work with. ...
• There is a bill in both houses of Congress called "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act" that would require independent audit capability and accessibility in all electronic voting systems. ...

• « Report to Congress on the Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulation | Main | Work of Suspended Gov't Data Mining Project Continues » February 23, 2004 Lawsuit in California Claims E-Voting Machines Pose Security Risk to Election Outcomes .
• Related postings on e-voting technology and security issues.

• Electronic Voting: New Machines, New Risks?.
• Alameda County uses electronic voting machines.
• A big issue in next month's recall election is the reliability of the old punch-card voting machines. But is electronic voting much better?.
• After 33 years of using punch-cards, Alameda County is now high tech, thanks to its investment in touch-screen voting machines.
• "Being a large urban county with a sizable language minority population and a large disabled population, we need to have access to these people so they can vote and these machines give us this access. ...
• For example, the electronic machines allow voters to select one of three languages -- English, Chinese, or Spanish. It sounds promising, but some experts question the reliability of the machines, and say they're an easy target for hackers.
• Henry Brady is the Berkeley professor whose research on punch-card voting was at the center of the ACLU's case to stall California's recall election. ...
• Touch-screen voting machines are already in roughly 200 cities and counties across 12 states. ... A recent study by Johns Hopkins and Rice universities showed that machines like those in Alameda County made by Diebold Incorporated are highly vulnerable. ...
• Procedures to prevent fraud have been in place at state and county levels long before electronic voting was created. Because of increased electronic voting, those safeguards are more stringent. ...
• But many proponents of touch-screen voting insist that printers are impractical and costly. Others say that if voting machines cost $4000, paying an extra $200 for the printer is not that much more.

• Expert: Palm Beach's New Voting Machines Have Problems.
• Expert: Palm Beach's New Voting Machines Have Problems.
• (AP) - The voting machines that replaced butterfly ballots and hanging chads are checked by an "Enron-style of auditing" and don't provide voters any assurance that their votes are being cast, an expert testified Tuesday. ...
• Rebecca Mercuri, a computer science professor at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, said questions remain about the $14 million machines Palm Beach County purchased to improve its voting system because they are designed to audit themselves. ...
• "The problem with the self-auditing machines is if it's broken, how can it tell you that it's broken?" Mercuri said. ...
• She was called in a Tuesday afternoon hearing to bolster a Boca Raton man's claims that he lost a City Council election in March because the new machines malfunctioned. ...
• The suit includes affidavits from eight voters who said they had trouble casting ballots on the ATM-style machines and says voters should be given paper receipts to confirm their vote was recorded. ...
• It also seeks to allow an independent review of the voting machines and related software and security features. ...
• Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore says such a review would void the machines' warranty and that they've been reviewed twice by labs appointed by the federal government and also by a state worker. ...
• She says most of the information the plaintiffs are seeking is filed with the state Division of Elections in Tallahassee and even if it were available, she couldn't provide it because it includes trade secrets of Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. , which manufactures the machines. ...
• LePore has said the only problems reported to her office following the March election were screens temporarily freezing when voters chose between English and Spanish, which did not prevent voting. ...
• She said the machines further demonstrated that they work Saturday when the county held a mock election in supermarkets and shopping malls allowing voters to try out the machines. ...
• KEYWORDS: PALMBEACH; VOTING Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore says such a review would void the machines' warranty and that they've been reviewed twice by labs appointed by the federal government and also by a state worker. ...
• She says most of the information the plaintiffs are seeking is filed with the state Division of Elections in Tallahassee and even if it were available, she couldn't provide it because it includes trade secrets of Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. , which manufactures the machines. ...

• Rush Holt Introduces Legislation to Require All Voting Machines To Produce A Voter-Verified Paper Trail  .
• The measure would require all voting machines to produce an actual paper record by 2004 that voters can view to check the accuracy of their votes and that election officials can use to verify votes in the event of a computer malfunction, hacking, or other irregularity. ...
• You enter your local polling place and go to cast your vote on a brand new “touch screen” voting machine. ...   As you exit the voting booth, however, you begin to wonder. ...
• Last October, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), groundbreaking election reform legislation that is currently helping states throughout the country replace antiquated and unreliable punch card and butterfly ballot voting systems. ...   It is fueling a rush by states and localities to purchase computer-voting systems that suffer from a serious flaw; voters and election officials have no way of knowing whether the computers are counting votes properly. ...
• “Voting should not be an act of blind faith. ...
•   In the 2002 election, brand new computer voting systems used in Florida lost over 100,000 votes due to a software error. ...
• 1)      Requires all voting systems to produce a voter-verified paper record for use in manual audits and recounts.   For those using the increasingly popular ATM-like “DRE”(Direct Recording Electronic) machines, this requirement means the DRE would print a receipt that each voter would verify as accurate and deposit into a lockbox for later use in a recount. ...
• 2)      Bans the use of undisclosed software and wireless communications devices in voting systems.
• 3)      Requires all voting systems to meet these requirements in time for the general election in November 2004. ...
• 4)      Requires that electronic voting system be provided for persons with disabilities by January 1, 2006 -- one year earlier than currently required by HAVA.   Like the voting machines for non-disabled voters, those used by disabled voters must also provide a mechanism for voter-verification, though not necessarily a paper trail. ...

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