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, version 1.1 (VVSG v1.1). The VVSG provides national certification requirements and testing protocols for voting systems against which many states require their voting systems to be certified.
As part of the 2009 Electronic Voting Tech Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (EVT/WOTE 2009), we would like to hold a system demonstration session. We envisage this session as an opportunity for workshop participants to examine and “play with” voting system implementations (or functioning prototypes). The format will be similar to a poster session, with space allocated for each system and participants walking between the different demonstrations. The demo session is mainly aimed at new or non-traditional voting systems (such as implementations of end-to-end verifiable systems), but if space allows we may also include demonstrations of existing systems.
If you would like to demonstrate a system, please email the following details to the EVT/WOTE chairs (evtwote09chairs@usenix.org):
Join us in Montreal, Canada, August 10–11, 2009, for the 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (EVT/WOTE ’09).
This year, the organizers of the USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop (EVT) have merged EVT with the IAVoSS Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (WOTE) to create a joint two-day workshop (EVT/WOTE ’09). EVT/WOTE seeks to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines, ranging from computer science and human-computer interaction experts through political scientists, legal experts, election administrators, and voting equipment vendors.
The program features a keynote address by Lawrence Norden, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law; system demonstrations; and sessions on usability, security, trustworthy elections, forensics, and more.
The full program can be found at http://www.usenix.org/events/evtwote09/tech/
The call for papers is now available for EVT/WOTE ’09 (August 10–11, 2009; submissions due April 17, 2009).
This year, the USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology (EVT) workshop and the IAVoSS Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (WOTE) have merged into a single two-day workshop, co-located with USENIX Security ’09 in Montreal. The combined Workshop will feature distinct EVT and WOTE sessions; accepted papers will appear in a joint Proceedings (grouped by session). Please see the EVT/WOTE ’09 page for more information.
Our 2008 Annual Report is available. The report highlights the Center’s major accomplishments and activities from 2008.
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.
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.
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.
Our 2007 Annual Report is available. The report highlights the Center’s major accomplishments and activities from 2007.
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.
