DRE voting machine

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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; that processes data by means of a computer program; and that records voting data and ballot images in memory components. 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. 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.

Contents

1 Security and Concerns

1.1 Auditing and VVAT
1.2 Open Source

2 Benefits of DRE voting machines
3 See
4 Notes
5 External links

Security and Concerns

Critics of DRE Machines claim that there is an increased risk of electoral fraud. If the security of the DRE source code software is compromised, election results could be tampered with in an undetectable fashion. While others claim review and testing procedures can detect fraudulent code, if present. Concerns like these have prompted the use of Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail. (The ACM published a study showing only 2 votes in each precinct would have been need to change the result in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election.Di Franco, A., Petro, A., Shear, E., and Vladimirov, V. 2004. Small vote manipulations can swing elections. Commun. ACM 47, 10 (Oct. 2004), 43-45. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1022594.1022621 )

Also see 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities

Auditing and VVAT

A fundamental challenge with DRE voting machines is the re-count of votes to verify that the hardware/software involved performed its task correctly.

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

Matt Quinn, the developer of the original Australian DRE system, believes that in the future there should be a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail, "There's no reason voters should trust a system that doesn't have it, and they shouldn't be asked to. Why on earth should [voters] have to trust me -- someone with a vested interest in the project's success? A voter-verified audit trail is the only way to 'prove' the system's integrity to the vast majority of electors, who after all, own the democracy." Kim Zetter, "Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting" Wired.com, November 3, 2003. http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045-2,00.html

Rebecca Mercuri has written a report on the basic voter verifiable ballot system, in which she corrects the problem by having the voting machine print a paper ballot or receipt that is verified by the voter before being dropped into a ballot box. The paper ballot is treated as the official ballot. The ballot is primary and the electronic records are used only for an initial count which can be disputed at no cost to the disputee. A random audit of the precincts is to ensure the integrity of the process when there is no official recount request. This solution has the problems of traditional paper ballots for an audit, the ballot boxes must be kept secure against vote exchanges.

One suggestion is that a receipt could be given to the voter to verify the DRE vote does not conflict with the paper vote. The concern with this solution is voter intimidation and vote selling.

There are cryptographic solutions that allow you to ensure your vote was correctly counted. In 2004, David Chaum proposed a solution to the verifiability issues that allows a voter to verify that the vote is cast appropriately and that the vote is accurately counted.David Chaum, "Secret-Ballot Receipts: True Voter-Verifiable Elections," IEEE Security and Privacy, vol. 02, no. 1, pp. 38-47, 2004. DOI= http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MSECP.2004.1264852 After the voter selects their candidates, the DRE machine prints out a specially formatted version of the ballot on two transparencies. When the layers are stacked, they show the human-readable vote. However, each transparency is encrypted with a form of Visual cryptography so that it alone does not reveal any information unless it is decrypted. The voter selects one layer to destroy at the poll. The DRE retains an electronic copy of the other layer and gives the physical copy as a receipt to ensure the ballot is not later changed. The system guards against changes to the voter's ballot and uses a mix-net decryption procedure to ensure that each vote is accurately counted. It guarantees these properties without violating the voter's privacy.

VoteHere also has a cryptographic solution that involves the voter choosing a number with which the system does some verifiable shuffling.Jim Adler, Andy Neff and others: http://www.votehere.net/documents.php Sastry, Karloff and Wagner have pointed out that there are issues with both of the Chaum and VoteHere cryptographic solutions.Chris Karlof, Naveen Sastry, and David Wagner. Cryptographic Voting Protocols: A Systems perspective. Proceedings of the Fourteenth USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 2005), August 2005. URL= http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~nks/papers/cryptovoting-usenix05.pdf

Open Source

Security experts, such as Bruce Schneier, have also suggested open source voting machine software, or at the very least, code publicly available for inspection, but this in itself is not enough as the code running on the machine might differ from that which has been inspected. The operating system, BIOS, firmware and other hardware can also be used to hide malicious code and need to be inspected. In Australia the software used is Open Source, but the other sources of error have caused the government to insist on a voter verifiable paper ballot.

Benefits of DRE voting machines

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

Besides the obvious benefit of increased speed in vote counting, DRE voting systems are often favored because they can incorporate assistive technologies for handicapped people, allowing them to vote without forfeiting the anonymity of their vote. These machines can use headphones and other adaptive technology to provide the necessary accessibility. DRE's can also 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.

Additionally, these machines can be programmed to display ballots in any language, reducing the need to print multiple paper ballots in different languages as mandated in some areas by the Voting Rights Act.

See

Electronic voting

Notes

External links

[Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting] by Kim Zetter at Wired
[David Allen's Black Box Voting website]
[Bev Harris's Black Box Voting website]
[AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project]
[Electronic voting website] by Rebecca Mercuri
[European Association Electronic Libre]
[National Committee for Voting Integrity]
[Open Voting Consortium] — group raising money to create open source voting systems with paper ballots.
[The Problem with Electronic Voting Machines] by Bruce Schneier (security expert)
[Verified Voting]

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