Electronic voting

File:Urna eletrônica.jpeg

Electronic voting machine by Diebold Election Systems used in all Brazilian elections and plebiscites. Photo by Agência Brasil

Electronic voting (also known as e-voting) is a term encompassing several different types of voting, embracing both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means of counting votes.

Electronic voting technology can include punch cards, optical scan voting systems and specialized voting kiosks (including self-contained Direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting systems). It can also involve transmission of ballots and votes via telephones, private computer networks, or the Internet.

Electronic voting technology can speed the counting of ballots and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. However, there has been controversy, especially in the United States, that electronic voting, especially DRE voting, can facilitate electoral fraud.

Overview

Electronic voting systems for electorates have been in use since the 1960s when punch card systems debuted. The newer optical scan voting systems allow a computer to count a voter's mark on a ballot. DRE voting machines which collect and tabulate votes in a single machine, are used by all voters in all elections in Brazil, and also on a large scale in India, the Netherlands, Venezuela, and the United States. Internet voting systems have gained popularity and have been used for government elections and referendums in the United Kingdom, Estonia and Switzerland as well as municipal elections in Canada and party primary elections in the United States and France.

There are also hybrid systems that include an electronic ballot marking device (usually a touch screen system similar to a DRE) or other assistive technology to print a voter-verifiable paper ballot, then use a separate machine for electronic tabulation.

Paper-based electronic voting system

Sometimes called a "document ballot voting system," paper-based voting systems originated as a system where votes are cast and counted by hand, using paper ballots. With the advent of electronic tabulation came systems where paper cards or sheets could be marked by hand, but counted electronically. These systems included punch card voting, marksense and later digital pen voting systems.

Most recently, these systems can include an Electronic Ballot Marker (EBM), that allow voters to make their selections using an electronic input device, usually a touch screen system similar to a DRE. Systems including a ballot marking device can incorporate different forms of assistive technology.

Direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting system

A direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machine records votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter (typically buttons or a touchscreen); that processes data with computer software; and that records voting data and ballot images in memory components. After the election it produces a tabulation of the voting data stored in a removable memory component and as printed copy. The system may also provide a means for transmitting individual ballots or vote totals to a central location for consolidating and reporting results from precincts at the central location. These systems use a precinct count method that tabulates ballots at the polling place. They typically tabulate ballots as they are cast and print the results after the close of polling.

In 2002, in the United States, the Help America Vote Act mandated that one handicapped accessible voting system be provided per polling place, which most jurisdictions have chosen to satisfy with the use of DRE voting machines, some switching entirely over to DRE. In 2004, 28.9% of the registered voters in the United States used some type of direct recording electronic voting system, up from 7.7% in 1996.

Security and Concerns about DRE-systems

Critics of DRE Machines claim that there is an increased risk of electoral fraud and if the security of the DRE software is compromised, election results could be tampered with in an undetectable fashion. Other critics charge that foreign hardware could be inserted into the machine, using a man in the middle attack technique, and call for DRE machines to be physically sealed. These claims are countered by the position that review and testing procedures can detect fraudulent code or hardware, if such things are present, and that a thorough, verifiable chain of custody would prevent the insertion of such hardware or software. Concerns like these have prompted the use of Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail. However these measures are often not or not properly taken. Another method to detect fraudulent voting machines are parallel test elections which are conducted on the election day with randomly picked machines. (The ACM published a study showing that, to change the outcome of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, only 2 votes in each precinct would have needed to been changed.)

A workgroup of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) stated in a discussion draft, "Simply put, the DRE architecture’s inability to provide for independent audits of its electronic records makes it a poor choice for an environment in which detecting errors and fraud is important." The report does not represent the official position of NIST, and misinterpretations of the report has led NIST to explain that "Some statements in the report have been misinterpreted. The draft report includes statements from election officials, voting system vendors, computer scientists and other experts in the field about what is potentially possible in terms of attacks on DREs. However, these statements are not report conclusions."

Demonstrated Laboratory Attacks on DRE-systems

• Diebold Election Systems AccuVote-TS (Manipulation of the votes by the University of Princeton.)
• Nedap ES3B (Manipulation of the votes by a citizen group)
• SDU voting computers (Violating the secrecy of the ballot using Van Eck phreaking, tested by the Dutch secret service AIVD)

Public network DRE voting system

A public network DRE voting system is an election system that uses electronic ballots and transmits vote data from the polling place to another location over a public network. Vote data may be transmitted as individual ballots as they are cast, periodically as batches of ballots throughout the election day, or as one batch at the close of voting. This includes Internet voting as well as telephone voting.

Public network DRE voting system can utilize either precinct count or central count method. The central count method tabulates ballots from multiple precincts at a central location.

Internet voting can use remote locations (voting from any Internet capable computer) or can use traditional polling locations with voting booths consisting of Internet connected voting systems.

Corporations and organizations routinely use Internet voting to elect officers and Board members and for other proxy elections. Internet voting systems have been used privately in many modern nations and publicly in the United States, the UK, Ireland, Switzerland and Estonia. In Switzerland, where it is already an established part of local referendums, voters get their passwords to access the ballot through the postal service. Most voters in Estonia can cast their vote in local and parliamentary elections, if they want to, via the Internet, as most of those on the electoral roll have access to an e-voting system, the largest run by any European Union country. It has been made possible because most Estonians carry a national identity card equipped with a computer-readable microchip and it is these cards which they use to get access to the online ballot. All a voter needs is a computer, an electronic card reader, their ID card and its PIN, and they can vote from anywhere in the world. Estonian e-votes can only be cast during the days of advance voting. On election day itself people have to go to polling stations and fill in a paper ballot.

Analysis of electronic voting

Electronic voting systems may offer some advantages over traditional voting techniques. An electronic voting system can be involved in any one of a number of steps in distributing, voting, collecting, and counting ballots, and thus may or may not introduce advantages into any of these steps.

Charles Stewart of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that 1 million more ballots were counted in 2004 than in 2000 because electronic voting machines detected votes that paper-based machines would have missed.

In May 2004 the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report titled "Electronic Voting Offers Opportunities and Presents Challenges", analyzing both the benefits and concerns created by electronic voting. A second report was released in September 2005 detailing some of the concerns with electronic voting, and ongoing improvements, titled "Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems Are Under Way, but Key Activities Need to Be Completed".

Others also challenge the use of electronic voting from a theoretical point of view, arguing that humans are not equipped for verifying operations occurring within an electronic machine and that because people cannot verify these operations, the operations cannot be trusted. Furthermore, some computing experts have argued for the broader notion that people cannot trust any programming they did not author.

Under a secret ballot system, there is no known input, nor any expected output with which to compare electoral results. Hence, electronic electoral results and thus the accuracy, honesty and security of the entire electronic system cannot be verified by humans..

Critics of electronic voting, including security analyst Bruce Schneier, note that "computer security experts are unanimous on what to do (some voting experts disagree, but it is the computer security experts who need to be listened to; the problems here are with the computer, not with the fact that the computer is being used in a voting application)...DRE machines must have a voter-verifiable paper audit trails... Software used on DRE machines must be open to public scrutiny" to ensure the accuracy of the voting system. Verifiable ballots are necessary because computers can and do malfunction, and because voting machines can be compromised.

Electronic ballots

Electronic voting systems may use electronic ballots. When electronic ballots are used there is no risk of exhausting the supply of ballots. Additionally, these electronic ballots remove the need for printing of paper ballots, a significant cost. When administering elections in which ballots are offered in multiple languages (in some areas of the United States, public elections are required by the National Voting Rights Act of 1965), electronic ballots can be programmed to provide ballots in multiple languages for a single machine. The advantage with respect to ballots in different languages appears to be unique to electronic voting. For example, King County, Washington's demographics require them under U.S. federal election law to provide ballot access in Chinese. With any type of paper ballot, the county has to decide how many Chinese-language ballots to print, how many to make available at each polling place, etc. Any strategy that can assure that Chinese-language ballots will be available at all polling places is certain, at the very least, to result in a significant number of wasted ballots. (The situation with lever machines would be even worse than with paper: the only apparent way to reliably meet the need would be to set up a Chinese-language lever machine at each polling place, few of which would be used at all.)

Critics argue the need for extra ballots in any language can be mitigated by providing a process to print ballots at voting locations. They argue further, the cost of software validation, compiler trust validation, installation validation, delivery validation and validation of other steps related to electronic voting is complex and expensive, thus electronic ballots aren't guaranteed to be less costly than printed ballots.

Critics of DRE Machines claim that there is a risk of the DRE software being compromised in an undetectable fashion.

Accessibility

A Hart eSlate DRE voting machine with jelly buttons for people with manual dexterity disabilities.

Electronic voting machines can be made fully accessible for persons with disabilities. Punchcard and optical scan machines are not fully accessible for the blind or visually impaired, and lever machines can be difficult for voters with limited mobility and strength.Electronic machines can use headphones, sip and puff, foot petals, joy sticks and other adaptive technology to provide the necessary accessibility.

Organizations such as the Verified Voting Foundation have criticized the accessibility of electronic voting machines and advocate alternatives. Some disabled voters (including the visually impaired) could use a tactile ballot, a ballot system using physical markers to indicate where a mark should be made, to vote a secret paper ballot. These ballots can be designed identically to those used by other voters.. However, other disabled voters (including voters with dexterity disabilities) could be unable to use these ballots.

Cryptographic verification

Electronic voting systems can offer solutions that allow voters to verify their vote is recorded and tabulated with mathematical calculations. These systems can alleviate concerns of incorrectly recorded votes.

One feature to mitigate such concerns could be to allow a voter to prove how they voted, with some form of electronic receipt, signed by the voting authority using digital signatures. This feature can conclusively prove the accuracy of the tally, but any verification system that cannot guarantee the anonymity of voter's choice, can enable voter intimidation or vote selling.

Some cryptographic solutions aim to allow the voter to verify their vote personally, but not to a third party. One such way would be to provide the voter with a digitally signed receipt of their vote as well as receipts of other randomly selected votes. This would allow only the voter to identify her vote, but not be able to prove her vote to anyone else. Furthermore, each vote could be tagged with a randomly generated voting session id, which would allow the voter to check that the vote was recorded correctly in a public audit trail of the ballot.

Voter intent

Electronic voting machines are able to provide immediate feedback to the voter detecting such possible problems as undervoting and overvoting which may result in a spoiled ballot. This immediate feedback can be helpful in successfully determining voter intent.

Transparency

It has been alleged by groups such as the UK-based Open Rights Group that a lack of testing, inadequate audit procedures, and insufficient attention given to system or process design with electronic voting leaves "elections open to error and fraud".

Audit trails and auditing

Further information: [[:Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail, and End-to-End Auditable Voting Systems]]

A fundamental challenge with any voting machine is assuring the votes were recorded as cast and tabulated as recorded. Non-document ballot voting systems can have a greater burden of proof. This is often solved with an independently auditable system, sometimes called an Independent Verification, that can also be used in recounts or audits. These systems can include the ability for voters to verify how their votes were cast or further to verify how their votes were tabulated.

A discussion draft argued by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) states, "Simply put, the DRE architecture’s inability to provide for independent audits of its electronic records makes it a poor choice for an environment in which detecting errors and fraud is important." The report does not represent the official position of NIST, and misinterpretations of the report has led NIST to explain that "Some statements in the report have been misinterpreted. The draft report includes statements from election officials, voting system vendors, computer scientists and other experts in the field about what is potentially possible in terms of attacks on DREs. However, these statements are not report conclusions."

A Diebold Election Systems, Inc. model AccuVote-TSx DRE voting machine with VVPAT attachment.

Various technologies can be used to assure voters that their vote was cast correctly, detect possible fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the original machine. Some systems include technologies such as cryptography (visual or mathematical), paper (kept by the voter or only verified), audio verification, and dual recording or witness systems (other than with paper).

Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, the creator of the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) concept (as described in her Ph.D. dissertation in October 2000 on the basic voter verifiable ballot system), proposes to answer the auditability question by having the voting machine print a paper ballot or other paper facsimile that can be visually verified by the voter before being entered into a secure location. Subsequently, this is sometimes referred to as the "Mercuri method." To be truly voter-verified, the record itself must be verified by the voter and able to be done without assistance, such as visually or audibly. If the voter must use a bar-code scanner or other electronic device to verify, then the record is not truly voter-verifiable, since it is actually the electronic device that is verifying the record for the voter. VVPAT is the form of Independent Verification most commonly found in elections in the United States.

End-to-end auditable voting systems can provide the voter with a receipt she can take home. This receipt does not allow her to prove to others how she voted, but it does allow her to verify that her vote is included in the tally, all votes were cast by valid voters, and the results are tabulated correctly. End-to-end (E2E) systems include Punchscan and ThreeBallot. These systems have not yet been used in U.S. elections.

Systems that allow the voter to prove how they voted are never used in U.S. public elections, and are outlawed by most state constitutions. The primary concerns with this solution are voter intimidation and vote selling.

An audit system can be used in measured random recounts to detect possible malfunction or fraud. With the VVPAT method, the paper ballot is often treated as the official ballot of record. In this scenario, the ballot is primary and the electronic records are used only for an initial count. In any subsequent recounts or challenges, the paper, not the electronic ballot, would be used for tabulation. Whenever a paper record serves as the legal ballot, that system will be subject to the same benefits and concerns as any paper ballot system.

To successfully audit any voting machine, a strict chain of custody is required.

Hardware

Critics, such as the group "Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet" ("We do not trust voting machines"), charge that foreign hardware could be inserted into the machine, using a man in the middle attack technique, and call for DRE machines to be physically sealed.

Software

Security experts, such as Bruce Schneier, have demanded that voting machine source code should be publicly available for inspection. Others have also suggested publishing voting machine software under an free software license like it is done in Australia.

Other

Criticisms can be mitigated by review and testing procedures to detect fraudulent code or hardware, if such things are present, and thorough a verifiable chain of custody to prevent the insertion of such hardware or software.

Benefits can include reduced tabulation times and an increase of participation (voter turnout), particularly through the use of Internet voting.

Those in opposition suggest alternate vote counting systems, citing Switzerland (as well as many other countries), which uses paper ballots exclusively, suggesting that electronic voting is not the only means to get a rapid count of votes. A country of a little over 7 million people, Switzerland publishes a definitive ballot count in about six hours. In villages, the ballots are even counted manually.

Critics also note that it becomes difficult or impossible to verify the identity of a voter remotely, and that the introduction of public networks become more vulnerable and complex.

It is not yet clear whether the total cost of ownership with electronic voting is lower than other systems.

Electronic voting examples

Australia

In 2007 Australian Defence Force and Defence civilian personnel deployed on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands will have the opportunity to vote via Internet with an Australian Electoral Commission pilot project.

Approximately 300,000 impaired Australians will vote independently for the first time in the 2007 elections. The Australian Electoral Commission has decided to implement voting machines in 29 locations.

In October of 2001 electronic voting was used for the first time in an Australian parliamentary election. In that election, 16,559 voters (8.3% of all votes counted) cast their votes electronically at polling stations in four places. The Victorian State Government introduced electronic voting on a trial basis for the 2006 State election.

Belgium

Electronic voting in Belgium started in 1991. It is widely used in Belgium for general and municipal elections and has been since 1999.

Brazil

Electronic voting in Brazil was introduced in 1996, when the first tests were carried in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Since 2000, all Brazilian elections have been fully electronic. By the 2000 and 2002 elections more than 400 thousand electronic voting machines were used nationwide in Brazil and the results were tallied electronically within minutes after the polls closed. Joao Abud Jr. who was with the original Brazilian company and has served as president of Diebold Procom Industria Electronica since April 2003, has been promoted to vice president of the company's Latin American Division.

Canada

Electronic voting in Canada has been used since at least the 1990s at the municipal level in many cities, and there are increasing efforts in a few areas to introduce it at a provincial level.

In the Canadian Province of Ontario, from November 5 to November 10 2003, 12 municipalities from the Prescott Russell and Stormont Dundas & Glengarry Counties held the first full municipal and school board electronic elections in North America using either the Internet or the phone but no paper ballots.

Peterborough, Ontario used Internet voting in 2006 in addition to the paper ballots.

Estonia

Electronic voting in Estonia began in October 2005 local elections when Estonia became the first country to have legally binding general elections using the Internet as a means of casting the vote and was declared a success by the Estonian election officials.

In 2007 Estonia held its and the world's first National Internet election. Voting was available from February 26 to 28. A total of 30,275 citizens used Internet voting.

EU CyberVote Project

In September 2000, the European Commission launched the CyberVote project with the aim of demonstrating "fully verifiable on-line elections guaranteeing absolute privacy of the votes and using fixed and mobile Internet terminals".

Trials were performed in Sweden, France, and Germany.

France

In January 2007 France's UMP party held a national presidential primary using both remote electronic voting and with 750 polling stations using touch screen electronic voting over the Internet. The election resulted in over 230,000 votes representing a near 70% turnout.

Elections in France utilized remote Internet voting for the first time in 2003 when French citizens living in the United States elected their representatives to the Assembly of the French Citizens Abroad. Over 60% of voters chose to vote using the Internet rather than paper. The Forum des droits sur l'Internet (Internet rights forum), published a recommendation on the future of electronic voting in France, stating that French citizens abroad should be able to use Internet voting for Assembly of the French Citizens Abroad elections.

Germany

In Germany the only accredited voting machines after testing by the PTB http://www.berlin.ptb.de/8/85/851/votingmachines.htm for national and local elections are the ESD1 and ESD2 from the Dutch company Nedap. About 2000 of them have been used in the 2005 Bundestag elections covering approximately 2 million voters. These machines differ only in certain details due to different voting systems from the ES3B hacked by a Dutch citizen group and the CCC on 5. October 2006. Because of this, additional security measures have been applied in the municipality elections on 22. October 2006 in Cottbus, like reading the software from the EPROM to compare it with the original and sealing the machines afterwards. The city Cottbus later decided not to buy Nedap voting computers.

At the moment there are several lawsuits in court against the use of electronic voting machines in Germany. One of these reached the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in February 2007. The plaintiffs are missing the transparency if the voting computers store the votes as intended by the voter and the possibility of a recount because the certified Nedap machines are DRE systems without a paper trail.

In the 2008 state elections of Hamburg an optical scan voting system based on digital paper will be used.

India

Electronic voting in India was first introduced in 1982 and was used on an experimental basis in the North Parur assembly constituency in the State of Kerala. However the Supreme Court of India struck down this election as against the law in A C Jose v. Sivan Pillai case. Amendments were made to the Representation of Peoples Act to legalise elections using Electronic Voting Machines. In 2003, all state elections and by-elections were held using EVMs.

Ireland

Ireland bought voting computers from the Dutch company Nedap for about 50 million euro. The machines were used on a 'pilot' basis in some constituencies in two elections in 2002. Due to campaigning by ICTE, Joe McCarthy, and the work of the Commission on Electronic Voting, the machines have not been used since, and their future is uncertain.

See also Electronic voting in Ireland

Italy

On the 9th and 10th of April 2006 the Italian municipality of Cremona used Nedap Voting machines during the national elections. The pilot involved 3000 electors and 4 polling stations were equipped with Nedap systems. The electoral participation was very high and the pilot was successful.

During the same elections (April 2006) the Ministry of New Technologies in cooperation with two big American companies organized a pilot only concerning e-counting. The experiment involved four regions and it cost 34 million of euro.

Netherlands

Since the late nineties, voting machines are used extensively during elections. Most areas in the Netherlands use electronic voting in polling places. The most widely used voting machines are produced by the company Nedap. In the parliamentary elections of 2006, 21,000 persons will be using the RIES Internet voting system to cast their vote.

On 5. October 2006 the group "Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet" ("We do not trust voting machines") demonstrated on Dutch television how the Nedap ES3B machines could be manipulated in 5 minutes. The exchange of the software would not be recognisable by voters or election officials.

Apparently there was a case of an election official misinforming voters of when their vote is recorded and later recording it himself during municipality elections in Landerd, Netherlands in 2006. A candidate was also an election official and got the unusual amount of 181 votes in the polling place where he was working. In the other three polling places together he got 11 votes. Only circumstantial evidence could be found because the voting machine was a direct-recording electronic voting machine, in a poll by a local newspaper the results were totally different. The case is still under prosecution.

Van Eck phreaking might also compromise the secrecy of the votes in an election using electronic voting. This made the Dutch government ban the use of computer voting machines manufactured by SDU in the 2006 national elections, fearing that secret ballots may not be kept secret.

See also: Dutch general election, 2006: Voting machine controversy

In September 2007 a committee chaired by Korthals Altes reported for the government that it would be better to return to paper voting. The deputy minister for interior Bijleveld said in a first response she would accept the committee's advice, and ban electronic voting. The committee also concluded that the time wasn't ready for voting over Internet. State secretary Ank Bijleveld responded by announcing a return to paper voting.. It was reported in September 2007 that "a Dutch judge has declared the use of Nedap e-voting machines in recent Dutch elections unlawful."

Norway

The Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development of Norway carried out pilots in three municipalities at local elections in 2003 on voting machines in the polling stations using touch screens.

Romania

Romania first implemented electronic voting systems in 2003, on a limited basis, to extend voting capabilities to soldiers and others serving in Iraq, and other theaters of war. Despite the publicly stated goal of fighting corruption, the equipment was procured and deployed in less than 30 days after the government edict passed.

Switzerland

Several cantons (Geneva, Neuchâtel and Zürich) have developed Internet voting test projects to allow citizens to vote via the Internet .

United Kingdom

England

Voting pilots have taken place in May 2006, June 2004, May 2003, May 2002, and May 2000.

In 2000, the London Mayoral and Assembly elections were counted using an optical scan voting system with software provided by DRS plc of Milton Keynes. In 2004, the London Mayoral, Assembly and European Parliamentary elections were scanned and processed using optical character recognition from the same company. Both elections required some editing of the ballot design to facilitate electronic tabulation, though they differed only slightly from the previous 'mark with an X' style ballots.

Scotland

An optical scan voting system was be used to electronically count paper ballots in the Scottish Parliament general election and Scottish council elections in 2007. A report commissioned by the UK Electoral Commission found significant errors in ballot design produced more than 150,000 spoilt votes.

Documented problems

• A litany of problems with voting systems in Florida since the 2000 Presidential election.

• Fairfax County, Virginia, November 4, 2003. Machines quit, jammed the modems in voting systems when 953 voting machines called in simultaneously to report results, leading to a denial of service incident on the election. 50% of precincts were unable to report results until the following day. Also, some voters complained that they would cast their vote for a particular candidate and the indicator of that vote would go off shortly after. Had they not noticed, their vote for that candidate would have remained uncounted; an unknown number of voters were affected by this.

• Diebold Election Systems, Inc. TSx voting system disenfranchised many voters in Alameda and San Diego Counties during the March 2, 2004 California presidential primary due to non-functional voter card encoders. On April 30 California's secretary of state decertified all touch-screen machines and recommended criminal prosecution of Diebold Election Systems. The California Attorney-General decided against criminal prosecution, but subsequently joined a lawsuit against Diebold for fraudulent claims made to election officials. Diebold settled that lawsuit by paying $2.6 million. On February 17, 2006 the California Secretary of State then recertified Diebold Election Systems DRE and Optical Scan Voting System.

• Napa County, California, March 2, 2004, an improperly calibrated marksense scanner overlooked 6,692 absentee ballot votes. [1]
• After the 2004 U.S. presidential election there were allegations of data irregularities and systematic flaws which may have affected the outcome of both the presidential and local elections. See: Voting machine problems in the 2004 United States presidential election
• On October 30 2006 the Dutch minister of Home affairs withdrew the license of 1187 voting machines from manufactured SDU, about 10% of the total number to be used, because it was proven by the Dutch National Intelligence Service that one could "listen out" the voting from up to 40 meters using Van Eck phreaking. National elections are to be held 24 days after this decision. The decision was forced by a Dutch grass roots organisation called wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet which translates to "we don't trust voting computers".
• Problems in the United States general elections, 2006:
  • During early voting in Miami, Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale, Florida in October of 2006 three votes intended to be recorded for Democratic candidates were displaying as cast for Republican. Election officials attributed it to calibration errors in the touch screen of the voting system.
  • In Pennsylvania, a computer programming error forced some to cast paper ballots. In Indiana, 175 precincts also resorted to paper. Counties in those states also extended poll hours to make up for delays.
  • A file of about 1000 first and second hand incident reports made to a non-partisan hotline that operated the day of the November 7 midterm elections as well as news reports.

Recommendations for improvement

In December of 2005 the US Election Assistance Commission unanimously adopted the 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, which significantly increase security requirements for voting systems and expand access, including opportunities to vote privately and independently, for individuals with disabilities. The guidelines will take effect in December 2007 replacing the 2002 Voting System Standards (VSS) developed by the Federal Election Commission.

Some groups such as the Open Voting Consortium believe that to restore voter confidence and to reduce the potential for fraud, all electronic voting systems must be completely available to public scrutiny.

In the summer of 2004, the Legislative Affairs Committee of the Association of Information Technology Professionals issued a nine-point proposal for national standards for electronic voting. In an accompanying article, the committee's chair, Charles Oriez, described some of the problems that had arisen around the country.

Electronic voting manufacturers

• AccuPoll
• Advanced Voting Solutions, formerly Shoup Voting Machine Co.
• Avante
• Diebold Election Systems (USA)
• Dominion Voting Systems Corporation (Canada)
• ES&S (USA)
• Hart InterCivic (USA)
• MicroVote
• Nedap (Netherlands)
• Sequoia Voting Systems (USA)
• UniLect

See also

• Voting machine
• Certification of voting machines
• Techniques of potential election fraud through physical tampering with voting machines
• Preventing Election fraud: Testing and certification of electronic voting
• Vote counting system
• E-democracy

External links

Election Administration

• Election Assistance Commission
• US Federal Voluntary Voting System Guidelines
• Vote.NIST.gov - The National Institute of Standards and Technology Help America Vote Act page.

Informational

• The Election Technology Library research list - A comprehensive list of research relating to technology use in elections.
• E-Voting information from ACE Project
• AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
• Technical information in areas of Internet security, cryptography, protocols, and online elections
• Electronic Voting Systems at Curlie
• Selker, Ted Scientific American Magazine Fixing the Vote October 2004
• The Machinery of Democracy: Voting System Security, Accessibility, Usability, and Cost from Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
• Electronic Voting Machines ProCon.org - Does the use of electronic voting machines improve the voting process?
• Who's who in election technology
• National Committee for Voting Integrity - an EPIC Project
• EPIC Privacy and Voting Page

Research

• How to Improve Security in Electronic Voting? Parakh, Abhishek and Kak,Subhash Louisiana State University
• "Private, Secure And Auditable Internet Voting", by Ed Gerck, in "Secure Electronic Voting", Gritzalis, Dimitris (Ed.), 2003, 240 p. Kluwer/Spring. ISBN-10: 1-4020-7301-1.

Advocacy, Commentary, and Criticism

• Worm attacked voter database in notorious Florida district Computerworld Magazine
• Electronic Voting Rebecca Mercuri's web site, includes articles, published papers, an e-mail list, and other electronic voting information.
• E-Voting Failures in the 2006 Mid-Term Elections: In January 2007 three e-voting activist groups published a report based on first and second hand incident reports made to a non-partisan hotline that operated the day of the November 7 midterm elections as well as news reports.
• Wired: Building a Better Voting Machine
• Can Electronic Voting Be Trusted?, Wall Street Journal
• A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections
• California Voter Foundation
• Activist Bev Harris's Black Box Voting website
• Brave New Ballot Avi Rubin's book on the intersection of politics and accurate voting
• Security expert Bruce Schneier occasionally discusses voting security:
  • Internet Voting vs. Large-Value e-Commerce — Why securing voting is not the same thing as securing financial transactions via the Internet (Bruce Schneier)
  • The Problem with Electronic Voting Machines
  • Major Vulnerability Found in Diebold Election Machines
  • What's Wrong With Electronic Voting Machines?
  • The Problem with Electronic Voting Machines
  • Bruce Schneier: New Voting Protocol
• David Allen's Black Box Voting website
• Emanuele Lombardi's "electronic voting and Democracy" website
• European Association Electronic Libre
• Jason Kitcat's guide to the pros and cons of e-voting UK-based blogger opposed to eVoting
• Electronic Voting by the Open Rights Group a UK-based digital rights organisation
• National Committee for Voting Integrity, a group working to promote verifiable electronic voting
• Open Voting Consortium Developing free software for electronic voting machines
• Voter Verified e-voting explained (FREE Project & FIPR)
• Verified Voting Campaign to Demand Verifiable Election Results
• Why We Need "Free Software" Voting Machines, by Jeff Nicholson-Owens
• Free software is not enough on its own, we need paper ballots, by Richard Stallman
• Analysis finds e-voting machines vulnerable
• Election Irregularities - Scandals - Vote Fraud - News and links covering the elections.
• Early discussion of risks of electronic voting - 1986 - and possibly first description of a backup paper ballot design by Professor Tom Benson
• Rather, Dan, "Dan Rather v. Machine: Rather takes on electronic voting devices in latest investigative report", Boston Metro, August 17, 2007.