18 Dec: 2008 Annual Report
Our 2008 Annual Report is available. The report highlights the Center’s major accomplishments and activities from 2008.
22 Oct: Vote “Flipping” on Hart InterCivic eSlate Systems
In the news, we’re seeing a number of reports concerning “vote flipping.” The story, as typically reported, is that voters are attempting to vote for one candidate but observe that the machine “flipped” their vote to the other candidate. For touch-screen voting machines, the most likely cause of this issue is miscalibration of the screens (or, perhaps, a voter who is significantly taller or shorter than the person who did the calibration, since different angles of view require different calibrations). I wrote a detailed explanation of this issue two years ago.
UPDATE: Barbara Ballard, a usability expert with Little Spring Designs offers some excellent advice about how to configure touch screen button layouts to minimize or eliminate the parallax issues that seem to induce or exacerbate vote flipping.
UPDATE 2: Matt Blaze writes how miscalibration of touch-screen voting machines could be used as a mechanism to disenfranchise voters.
A related issue concerns reports of vote flipping on the Hart InterCivic eSlate voting machine. These machines do not have touch-sensitive screens, so therefore poor calibration cannot explain the voter confusion. Since my home county uses eSlates, I went to vote early, this morning, and paid careful attention to how the user interface works. For those unfamiliar with eSlates, the voter’s primary interface to the machine is a dial-wheel and an “Enter” button, which operates in a manner that would be quite familiar to users of Apple’s iPod. You turn the wheel and it highlights successive entries. You press the Enter button and it indicates your selection graphically. Using some HTML tables, I’ve attempted to recreate the salient details below.
5 May: ACCURATE Comments on the VVSG
A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections (ACCURATE) submitted public comment today to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on their draft Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG), urging the Commission to adopt certain key features fo the draft. The VVSG provides a national certification framework for U.S. voting systems against which 40 states require their voting systems to be certified.
30 Jan: ACCURATE/Usenix EVT ‘08 CFP
We are currently accepting paper submissions for the The 3rd EVT Workshop to be held July 28–29, 2008, co-located with the 17th USENIX Security Symposium in San Jose, California. For more information please visit the CFP site.
21 Jan: 2007 Annual Report
Our 2007 Annual Report is available. The report highlights the Center’s major accomplishments and activities from 2007.
3 Aug: California top-to-bottom review reports
Reports from the top-to-bottom review of California voting systems have been released at the California Secretary of State’s web site.
As part of the top-to-bottom review, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen commissioned the University of California to evaluate 3 voting systems used in the state of California. The study involves four components: accessibility review, red team testing, source code review, and document review. Reports from the first three components are now available. The document review reports are expected to be released later.
2 Jul: ACCURATE/USENIX EVT ’07
The EVT ’07 workshop, co-sponsored by ACCURATE and USENIX, is now open for registration. Register online by Friday, July 27, 2007.
Read on for more information.
13 Apr: Sarasota’s disputed Congressional election
David Dill and Dan Wallach recently wrote a report discussing open research issues in Florida’s 13th Congressional District.
2 Apr: Other recent House/Senate testimony
ACCURATE PI Dan Wallach testified before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration on February 7. His testimony is now online. Also of interest to readers of this site, Princeton professor Ed Felten recently testified before the Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Elections. In his blog, he discusses both his main testimony and supplemental testimony.
25 Mar: Wagner testifies on source code disclosure
David Wagner (an ACCURATE member) recently testified before the US House of Representatives at a hearing of the Elections Subcommittee of the Committee on House Administration. Wagner’s written testimony addresses the issue of public disclosure of voting system source code.
