Comments to the Technical Guidelines Development Committee

From the National Committee for Voting Integrity

March 9, 2005

The National Committee for Voting Integrity (NCVI) is writing to
strongly encourage the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC)
to make greater use of the expertise and resources of the National
Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) in developing any new voting
technology standards.  Because of the level of interest shown by
computer technologists, media, election reform and voting rights
advocates throughout the United States there is a great deal of interest
in the subject of computerized voting systems.  Your work is greatly
anticipated, which means the decisions you make will be closely reviewed
and reported on in the media, research, academic, civil rights and
voting rights communities.

There may be detractors and supporters of your efforts, but the voices
that will carry the greatest weight will be those of technologists, who
through their efforts made security threats regarding electronic voting
systems an important area of national concern.  Their level of interest
in this area has lead to the creation of several groups, which include,
but are not limited to, the NCVI, Verified Voting, and Voting System
Performance Rating.

It is our collective advice to the TGDC that elections must require an
end-to-end concern for a wide variety of integrity requirements,
beginning with the registration process, ballot construction, and
continuing through vote tabulation and reporting.  Many of these aspects
of public elections have been discussed in hearings held by the TGDC. 
Therefore, we would like to focus our comments to the TGDC on the
importance of election administration to successfully meet the challenge
of creating in practice a secure federal election.   A key to the
success of this effort will be how well the review of issues such as
static charge threats, insider and outsider threats, and natural events
are correctly evaluated and addressed by the standards developed for
voting systems in practice.

When the TGDC makes its recommendations to the full U.S. Election
Assistance Commission (EAC) on voting technology standards you should
allow NIST\'s expertise in the area of standards development and
computer security to evaluate the end-to-end process of elections that
use electronic voting technology.  These recommendations may become the
new benchmark for government approved voting technology to be used in
public elections. However, the TGDC should remember that today there are
fifteen bills in the United States House and Senate that refer to the
\"Help America Vote Act\" (HAVA), and more are expected to be introduced
as attempts are made to address the issues raised by the failure of
paperless voting systems during the 2004 election season.  It is
important to note that manufacturers of these systems continue to gloss
over the problem. In Carteret County, North Carolina, more than 4,500
ballots were not counted due to the poor design of the \"Patriot\"
voting machine. Unbelievably, the manufacturer Unilet currently states
on its web site that the Patriot voting machine has, \"never had a
significant hardware or software election problem, and never lost even a
single vote.\"

Direct recording electronic (DRE) machines used in the 2004 primary and
general election were too unreliable and unauditable for deployment
without a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT).  This fact was
proven time and again with the type of failures experienced.

A few examples include, but are not limited to:

Sharp County Recount (Nebraska)

3,000 phantom votes detected

Date: November 5, 2004

Source: Channel Six Omaha NE WOWT
<http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/1164496.html>

Three Council Of State Races Remain Undecided (North Carolina)

Date: November 4, 2004

Source: WRAL.com <http://www.wral.com/news/3891488/detail.html>

Another vote tabulation error recorded in Yadkin County, which double
counted about 1,000 votes following Tuesday\'s election.

County\'s software woes cause undervote (Texas)

Date: November 4, 2004

Source: Fort Worth Star Telegraph
<http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/10097146.htm>

Error in Wichita County\'s punch-card tabulation machines caused
undervoting by as much as 20 percent in the presidential race.

Lost E-votes Could Flip Napa Race

Date Published: March 12, 2004

Source: Wired News <http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,62655,00.html>

Electronic voting machines used in the California Primary failed to
record votes on some of its paper ballots, which will require rescanning
of optical paper ballots.

Over the last two years, security experts and election watchdogs have
uncovered a wide array of significant design defects in DRE voting
machines.  If the TGDC will fully use the professional resources
available at NIST, you will learn that these machines, like other
computers, are vulnerable to programmer error, equipment malfunction,
and malicious attacks. If electronic voting technology is to become the
foundation of our democratic process, it must earn the trust of voters.
There must be no uncertainty about the quality and trustworthiness of
these machines. All voting technology put before the public must perform
reliably from the start of the election to the finish of the final vote
tally, including any possible audits or recounts.

The unfortunate events in the Florida Presidential Election of 2000 have
increased citizen awareness and scrutiny of our voting process. Notably,
citizens learned how poor interfaces, such as the butterfly ballot, and
poor vote-recording methods, such as punchcards, could exclude their
vote from the tally or, possibly worse, count their vote incorrectly.
Events of the last year have shown that inadequately designed, poorly
tested, secret voting technology deployed by states and municipalities
have disenfranchised Americans throughout the country. Voters from
California to North Carolina have been turned away from polling booths
or learned later that their votes may not have been counted.

An account of DREs from this past election raises several important
questions. How many DRE ballots were not included in North Carolina\'s
statewide tallys? How many other voters noticed the absence of the
Senate race, but did not succeed in obtaining a provisional ballot? Of
those voters who filled out a provisional ballot, how many were included
in the final count? The lack of a paper trail reduces any audit to pure
guesswork as to the scope and severity of this problem.

America should be the gold standard by which other nations measure the
strength and reliability of their electoral process. The history of the
United States of America is the story of people fighting for and
defending the right to vote, the right to representation. Americans
deserve the most reliable, secure, and accurate voting system in every
precinct and every community. Voters deserve a tangible, privately
verified record of their vote, cast on machines that are accessible,
easy-to-use, and free from subtle tampering and foul play. We deserve
openness in our voting process, including the right to hire independent
security and audit teams, free from non-disclosure agreements and other
secretive, restrictive licenses. Every citizen should have the right to
understand every step in our elections, from the time the voting
machines are built to when the final results are announced. And vendors
who try to work around election laws or hide known flaws undermine our
democracy, and deserve to face civil or criminal suits from the
communities whose trust they betrayed.

The right to vote is the foundation of this country, carefully and
clearly enumerated in our Constitution. We owe it to our fellow citizens
to work openly and steadily to protect the rights of all voters. We
encourage this commission to address the defects present in current
voting systems, and work to increase the accountability and integrity of
the American voting process.

Thank you.

MEMBERS

Peter G. Neumann, Chair \* David Burnham \* David Chaum \* Cindy Cohn \*
Lillie Coney \* David L. Dill \* David Jefferson \* Jackie Kane \*
Douglas W. Jones \* Stanley A. Klein \* Vincent J. Lipsio \* Justin
Moore \* Jamin Raskin \* Marc Rotenberg \* Avi Rubin \* Bruce Schneier
\* Paul M. Schwartz \* Barbara Simons \* Sam Smith

BACKGROUND

The National Committee on Voter Integrity (NCVI) was established to
promote voter-verified balloting and to preserve privacy protections for
elections in the United States. The Committee brings together experts on
voting issues from across the country.