U.S. Supreme Court vs. Voting Technology (fwd)

[Robert Guerra]

---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Thursday, December 14, 2000 3:42 AM -0800
From: Ed Gerck <egerck at NMA.COM>
To: DIGSIG at LISTSERV.TEMPLE.EDU
Subject: U.S. Supreme Court vs. Voting Technology

List:

In its ruling on the Florida election, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively
issued a challenge to today's technologists: Create uniform standards for
casting ballots so there can be uniform standards for counting votes.

However, Florida voting systems exemplify a mixture of technologies, with
40 percent using punch-cards, 55 percent using optical scans, 4 percent
using mechanical voting machines and 1 percent using manually tabulated
ballots [1].

Ballots in the U.S. are cast using widely different methods, machines,
ballot designs, and maintenance procedures. How can one apply a uniform
standard to a system that is not uniform?

In my view, the justices struggled with the question of valid votes and
decided that objectivity needs to be enforced even in a situation where
there is no objective reference. This amounts to a technical contradiction.
But law has the final word on technology and should set the requirements.
It is now up to us technologists to design systems that comply with the law
? or turn it back to law and say that this is impossible, something like
legislation that once was introduced [2] to define the value of pi as 3.
The Supreme Court decision is thus either bogus or poses a need for strict
voting standards.

In this regard, a set of 16 strict standards for precinct-based Internet
voting ? which are technology-independent and can also be applied to
paper-based and electronic touch-screen systems ? was recently presented by
Safevote [3] for public comments after some discussions at the IVTA [4] and
other online groups, to the IVTA. The requirements include specifications
for voter privacy, vote secrecy, election integrity, tamper-proof ballots,
open protocol review, open source code, technology independence, physical
recounts, multiple audit trails, and 100 percent vote accuracy.

Anonymous digital signatures are one way to implement the requirements, as
shown in [5].

The requirements and background can be downloaded at
www.thebell.net/archives/thebell1.7.pdf -- besides their technical use in
developing practical and yet better voting systems, the requirements may
also be helpful to legal re-evaluations of what law can and should
objectively define in order to help improve voting systems in the U.S.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck


[1] The Bell, www.thebell.net, June 2000.

[2] Indiana House Bill #246 was introduced on 18 January 1897, and
declares: "the ratio of the diameter and circumference is as five-fourths
to four," which makes pi = 3.2. There are other values for pi quoted in the
Bill. But the lore is pi = 3, and this is what the public perception has
retained -- so, this is also what I chose as an example. More in
http://www.acc.umu.se/~olletg/pi/indiana.html

[3] www.safevote.com

[4] www.ivta.org, tech WG archives at
http://www.mail-archive.com/tech@ivta.org/

[5] www.safevote.com/demo2000/

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