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Electronic Voting Machines
by George W. Zobrist
This is the year of electronic voting. Many states have
experimented with electronic voting since the 2000 Presidential
election; several systems still have bugs. In fact, Florida’s recent presidential primary experienced
glitches when poll workers in Palm Beach County inadvertently
pressed a wrong button and prevented some voters from voting.
Whether the systems that will ultimately be used will be web-based or touch-screen, critical issues such as security, auditing, resources
and computer literacy will surely surround them. These issues
are highly political, and states and the federal government have
proposed or enacted legislation to deal with them.
The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, for instance,
appropriated $2.5 billion to states for electronic voting
machines and process upgrades. More recently, Rep. Rush
Holt (D-N.J.) introduced the Voter Confidence and Increased
Accessibility Act of 2003 (H.R. 2239), which would amend HAVA to
provide a paper trail for investigating recounts or voter fraud.
The Senate is considering a similar bill (S. 1980). Several states,
including Ohio, California and Nevada, are already requiring
auditable paper trails for their voting systems (www.usatoday.com/tech/techpolicy).
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Security experts question at least one manufacturer’s electronic
voting machine security. In a 24-page report titled, “Analysis
of an Electronic Voting System” (IEEE Symposium on Security and
Privacy 2004, IEEE Computer Society Press, May 2004),
researchers concluded that the system is unsuitable for use in a
general election because voters without insider privileges could
cast unlimited votes, insider threats are considerable, and
votes could be matched with individual voters. They recommended
a “voter-verifiable audit trail.”
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A recent USA Today “Editorial and Opposing View” (14 May 2004)
addresses electronic voting systems. The editorial’s viewpoint
is that recent high-tech mishaps do not serve voters well, and
that jurisdictions should keep using traditional vote-counting
methods. The editorial points out some of the recent problems
with electronic voting systems to support the viewpoint:
California voters experienced touch screen malfunctions; in
Maryland, primary votes were cast erroneously, due, in some
cases, to the wrong set of candidates being presented; and in
Florida, 134 voters in Broward County did not have their votes
recorded.
Harris N. Miller, President
of the
Information Technology Association of America, presenting the
opposing view, saying that the
technology’s time has come. He said stand-alone electronic
voting systems cannot be accessed
or hacked outside of the voting unit. Moreover, both independent
security officials and local election officials test and approve
systems’ technical accuracy. In addition, officials can print
the screen of each vote cast when recounts are necessary.
Finally, he notes that news reports of occasional troubles are
not related to security or technology, but rather to
inadequately trained poll workers and election officials.
What the IEEE is Doing
In testimony before the
Election Assistance Commission on 5 May, Stephen Berger, chair
of IEEE’s Voting System Standards Coordinating Committee (VSSCC
338), said that the IEEE is actively pursuing the development of
standards for voting equipment. VSSCC 38, supervises the IEEE
standards in this area, its first and most active project being
Voting Equipment Standard, or IEEE Project 1583 (P1583). Using
IEEE Standard FEC 2002, Project P1583 is charged with
development of a standard of requirements and evaluation methods
for election voting equipment. The standard will provide
technical specifications for electronic, mechanical, and human
factors that can be used by manufacturers of voting machines or
by those purchasing such machines.
Another IEEE project in
this area is Electronic Data Interchange (P1622), which is
working on data interchange standards. VSSCC is seeking to
develop a standard for data formats for data that can be
transferred reliably through different components of the voting
system, using recognized data structures. This work will be very
helpful in facilitating the flow of information through the
system.
Leave Your Voting to the Machine?
Andy Jordan’s article titled, “Voting by Net Proxy” (Tech Live,
www.abcnews.com) describes an interesting futuristic approach
being proposed by the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. This
approach suggests developing a software agent that “mines” your
online and other computer habits to extract a political ideology
and make voting recommendations — possibly even casting
your vote. Whether such a system is in our future remains to be
seen.
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By
comparison to current voting systems, do you think it's
important that electronic voting machines provide voters
with a paper record of their vote?
Do you think electronic voting
machines are secure? Reliable? Accurate?
Please
send your thoughts and comments to us by clicking on the
link above or by e-mailing us at todaysengineer@ieee.org.
Be sure to include your name, home city and state, and
IEEE membership level (if applicable). IEEE-USA Today’s
Engineer reserves the right to publish letters in future
issues.
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Further Reading
Additional information on the subject, can found at:
IEEE Spectrum has covered electronic voting in a variety of
articles, including “A Better Ballot Box” (Rebecca Mercuri,
October 2002); “Security Experts Question Leading E-Voting
System” (Steven Cherry, August 2003).
www.spectrum.ieee.org
Several web sites take the view that e-voting threatens
democracy. These include www.blackboxvoting.com and
www.ecotalk.org/votingsecurity.htm.
Other useful sites include:
You can also search the Internet using
keywords such as voting paper trails, electronic voting
machines, voting machines and web-based voting.
Dr. George W. Zobrist is professor emeritus at the University of
Missouri-Rolla, Department of Computer Science, and is IEEE-USA's
Member Activities editor.
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