A quick review:
* We know that the Diebold Election Systems voting products are
junk. We know
that private testing labs approved this stuff for use, and acted as the
Arthur Andersons for Diebold's Enron. Extensive documentation
like this and this show Diebold
internal EMails "gaming" the test labs. There's strong evidence
saying the Sequoia products are trouble too.
What do we do now?
1) Voter Verified Paper Trails! California just
passed SB1438
which while slightly convoluted, works well - it specifies a
voter-verified paper trail that becomes the legal final vote of record
in case of a recount, if the paper and electronic records don't
match. We need matching legislation in every state and at the
Federal level. It's important in all cases that the paper be the
final legal vote.
Unfortunately, rigged
tabulator software can still throw an election if the paper isn't
checked (or rather, checked thoroughly enough. Therefore:
2) All elections software source code must be publicly
available. That doesn't mean "free" in the Linux/GNU sense;
voting technology is NOT "rocket science", there's no significant new
ideas at risk, and the stuff would still be protected from plagiarism
the same way books and movies are now. But the "geeks of America"
must do the back-checking that the FEC-approved testing labs have
failed at. Right now, the most advanced true open-source (and
low-cost-hardware) voting system project is the Open Voting Consortium
- I recommend paying them a visit; I have no organizational or
financial links to them, I'm purely a fan :).
3) There must be a commitment to "openness" on the part of
elections officials. For a multiple examples of how NOT to do it,
read Jeremiah
Akin's reports regarding the Riverside County Elections Department
and some of the responses to Bev's "Help America Audit" project.
California's passage of
Proposition 59 establishing a constitutional right to openness in
government will be a big help. But until these kinds of rules permeate
every state and the Feds, we need to link openness to all future
electronic voting reform laws.
4) There must be proper CPA-grade auditing processes throughout
the vote intake and tally process. Bev Harris used to be a
forensic accountant. A number of "elections experts" feel that
"votes aren't quite like money" - Bev, myself and the rest of the BoD
of BlackBoxVoting.org feel differently. When banks take in money,
there's a paper trail. When they transfer it, there's an
untamperable audit log created. You can tell what happened.
And this has been well understood going back to the days of Lloyds of
London financing wooden sailing ships back when we were still just
minor colonies. All of that understanding, that "R&D" (which
extends thoroughly into electronic book-keeping systems) needs to be
transferred to voting technology.