**REMARKS OF JOHN GALE, SECRETARY OF STATE, NEBRASKA**

**EAC'S INTERDISCIPLINARY ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION OF TGDC'S 2007
RECOMMENDED VOLUNTARY VOTING SYSTEM GUIDELINES**

**WASHINGTON, D. C.**

**MAY 5, 2008**

MY NAME IS JOHN GALE, THE NEBRASKA SECRETARY OF STATE. I HAVE SERVED IN
THIS ELECTIVE POSITION FOR SEVEN AND ONE-HALF YEARS. ONE OF MY CORE
DUTIES IS THAT OF CHIEF ELECTION OFFICER FOR OUR STATE. I AM PRIVILEGED
TO HAVE A DEPUTY FOR ELECTIONS, NEAL ERICKSON, WHO HAS SERVED IN THAT
ROLE FOR ALMOST FOURTEEN YEARS, WHO HAS BEEN A CLOSE ADVISOR.

AS SECRETARY OF STATE, I HAVE SERVED ON THE U.S. EAC STANDARDS BOARD,
AND HAVE ALSO SERVED AS ONE OF THE TWO STANDARDS BOARD REPRESENTATIVES
ON THE U.S. EAC TECHNICAL GUIDELINES DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE (TGDC) FOR
THE PAST FOUR YEARS.

FOLLOWING THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF NOVEMBER, 2000, I ALSO SERVED AS
CHAIR OF TWO LEGISLATIVELY MANDATED TASK FORCES IN MY STATE ON ELECTION
REFORM AND ON VOTER TURNOUT ISSUES. BOTH TASK FORCES SUBMITTED FINAL
REPORTS TO OUR STATE LEGISLATURE.

SINCE THE DISCUSSION TODAY WILL BE CONDUCTED IN SEVEN SEGMENTS, I WILL
ADDRESS EACH OF THOSE TOPICS IN WRITING, BUT FIRST I WANT TO MAKE SOME
PRELIMINARY COMMENTS ABOUT THE TDGC PROCESS.

**A. TGDC PROCESS:**

THE DRIVING ENGINE OF TGDC WAS THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND
TECHNOLOGY (NIST). TGDC WAS CHAIRED BY THE NIST DIRECTOR. THE
ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF AND SCIENTISTS WERE ALL FROM NIST. THE PROJECT
DIRECTORS WERE MARK SKALL AND JOHN WACK, BOTH NIST MANAGERS. TGDC WAS
BROKEN DOWN INTO THREE SUBCOMMITTEES, HUMAN FACTORS AND PRIVACY;
SECURITY AND TRANSPARENCY; AND TESTING AND CORE REQUIREMENTS. THESE
SUBCOMMITTEES HELD REGULAR ONE HOUR TELEPHONE CONFERENCES CALLS TO
UPDATE THE SUBCOMMITTEES ON THEIR OWN ISSUES; THEY WERE USUALLY HIGHLY
TECHNICAL IN NATURE, LARGELY STAFF DRIVEN, AND SELDOM FRAMED TO BE
POLICY DISCUSSIONS BY THE TGDC MEMBERS.

NIST WAS FUNDED BY HAVA TO UNDERTAKE THIS PROJECT, AND THE FULLTIME
SCIENTISTS ENGAGED TO DO THE WORK ON THE PROJECT WERE VERY COMPETENT AND
QUALIFIED. THEY DID APPROACH THE ISSUES FROM AN ACADEMIC RATHER THAN
BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE. AS SCIENTISTS THEY WERE QUICKLY ENGAGED AS
ACADEMICS IN THE TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF THEIR ROLE, AND VERY CAREFULLY
SOUGHT TO AVOID REVEALING ANY POLICY BIASES TO THE TGDC SUBCOMMITTEES.
AS A RESULT, THERE WAS ALWAYS A DISCONNECT BETWEEN THE TWO GROUPS, ONE
WRAPPED UP IN THE DETAILS, AND THE OTHER SEEKING TO DEFINE POLICY
CHOICES.

IN ADDITION, THE TGDC MEMBERS WERE SELECTED FROM A VARIETY OF
ORGANIZATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS, BASED UPON A FORMULA IN HAVA, AND THE
MAJORITY OF THE FIFTEEN MEMBERS WERE SPECIALISTS IN PARTICULAR FIELDS,
WHETHER IT BE COMPUTER SCIENCE, ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, OR USABILITY. IN
ADDITION, TWO WERE ELECTION OFFICIALS FROM THE STANDARDS BOARD; TWO WERE
ELECTION OFFICIALS FROM THE EAC ADVISORY COMMITTEE; AND TWO WERE FROM
THE U.S. ACCESS BOARD. THESE SIX DID NOT HAVE THE SCIENTIFIC AND

TECHNICAL SKILLS OF THE MORE EXPERT BOARD MEMBERS, NOR OF THE NIST STAFF
SCIENTISTS.

THE SUBCOMMITTEES FOR THE MOST PART MET SEPARATELY BY TELEPHONE, AND NOT
TOGETHER; THE SUBCOMMITTEES SELDOM MET TO CONSIDER AND VOTE ON POLICY
ISSUES WITH REGARD TO THEIR SUBJECT MATTER; AND THERE WAS NO
CROSS-TRAINING NOR ORIENTATION FOR THE MEMBERS ON A GENERAL LEVEL OF
EXPERTISE OF THE MEMBERS.

CONSIDERABLE MATERIAL FLOWED FROM THE NIST STAFF, SUCH AS WHITE PAPERS
AND CONSTANT REVISIONS TO THE PROPOSED STANDARDS, AND IT WAS VERY
OVERWHELMING FOR THE LAY MEMBERS TO ATTEMPT TO READ, ABSORB, UNDERSTAND,
AND PUT SUCH MATERIAL INTO THE CONTEXT OF POLICY ISSUES. AS VOLUNTEERS
WITH THEIR OWN FULLTIME JOBS, THE LAY MEMBERS HAD TO RELY TO A VERY
LARGE DEGREE ON THE NIST STAFF TO GUIDE THE PROCESS AND MAKE THE MOST
REASONABLE AND APPROPIATE RECOMMENDATIONS. CERTAINLY THE PROCESS WAS
IMPACTED BY TGDC MEMBERS, BUT WITH THE PRESS OF TIME AND THE LACK OF
SCIENTIFIC EXPERTISE BY MANY MEMBERS, THE PRACTICAL RESULT WAS THAT TGDC
WAS LED BY NIST AND NOT TGDC LEADING NIST.

THE TGDC MEETING AGENDAS WERE PREPARED BY NIST STAFF, THE TIMES ASSIGNED
FOR REVIEW OF EACH SUBCOMMITTEE WERE MADE BY NIST, AND THE PRESENTATIONS
WERE ALWAYS MADE BY NIST STAFF. THE MATERIALS PRESENTED FOR EACH
SUBCOMMITTEE BY NIST STAFF WERE INTENSIVE AND EXTENSIVE, AND TIME FOR
DISCUSSION WAS SHORT. IT WAS ALWAYS CHALLENGING TO GRASP THE TECHNICAL
DETAILS OF THE POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS, AND THEN TO TRY TO SORT IT OUT
INTO POLICY DISCUSSIONS. AGAIN CONSIDERABLE GOOD FAITH RELIANCE ON THE
NIST STAFF WAS NEEDED.

IT WAS NOT UNCOMMON FOR TGDC MEMBERS TO FEEL MORE LIKE A RUBBER STAMP AT
TIMES THAN POLICY MAKERS.

IN SUMMARY, THE ORGANIZATION OF TGDC WAS AWKWARD AND IN MY MIND TOO
DISJOINTED, BUT THAT WAS THE WAY CONGRESS CONSTRUCTED IT. WE HAD TO LIVE
WITH THAT ARRANGEMENT, BUT THE ULTIMATE PRODUCE WAS MORE OF A NIST
PRODUCT THAN A TGDC PRODUCT. THE FINAL DRAFT WAS A GOOD DOCUMENT FOR
WHAT IT IS. CRITICISM SUCH AS LACK OF READABILITY, COST ASSESSMENT, LACK
OF SUFFICIENT INPUT BY VENDORS AND ELECTION OFFICIALS IS CERTAINLY
WARRANTED. IT DID BRING TO THE TABLE ISSUES AND TOPICS RAISED BY MANY
GROUPS, AND GAVE THEM CLOSE ATTENTION. NOW THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THIS
PRODUCT IS WORKABLE IN THE REAL WORLD.

**B. DEFICIENCES OF THE TGDC PROCESS:**

TGDC WAS MANDATED BY CONGRESS TO MAKE 2005 VVSG RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE
END OF 2004, AND THOSE RECOMMENDATIONS WERE LARGELY LIFTED FROM THE 2002
NASED VVSS, IMPROVED AND ENHANCED TO THE DEGREE POSSIBLE, AND APPROVED
BY TGDC IN A VERY TIME PRESSURED ENVIRONMENT. THERE WAS LITTLE CHANCE
FOR DEEP POLICY REVIEW, FOR CONSIDERATION OF CHANGING TECHNOLOGY AND
VOTING PATTERNS, OR FOR VISIONARY THINKING ABOUT INNOVATION CLASSES.

THE EAC TOOK THOSE 2005 TGDC VVSG STANDARDS, PUT THEM THROUGH THE PUBLIC
COMMENT PHASE, AND ADOPTED THE FINAL VERSION TO TAKE EFFECT IN DECEMBER,
2007. SINCE EAC HAD BEEN RUSHED TO GET ORGANIZED, HIRE STAFF, AND
CONDUCT ANY SEMBLANCE OF ORDERLY AND THOROUGH POLICY REVEW, THE 2005
VVSG SEEMED TO BE A BOOTSTRAP BETWEEN THE 2002 VVSS AND THE NEXT
ITERATION, WITH THE HOPE OF THE POST-2005 ITERATION BECOMING THE MORE
FAR-RANGING, THOROUGH AND VISIONARY ONE.

HENCE THE 2007 VVSG RECOMMENDATIONS CONSTITUTED A RADICAL CHANGE FROM
THE PREVIOUS VOTING SYSTEM STANDARDS. THESE CONCEPTS INCLUDED SOFTWARE
INDEPENDENCE (SI), INDEPENDENT VOTER-VERIFIABLE RECORDS (IVVR); OPEN
ENDED VULNERABILITY TESTING (OEVT), AND USABILITY BENCHMARKS. EACH OF
THESE DID INDEED INTRODUCE ADDITIONAL COMPLEXITY TO SYSTEM DESIGN AND
DEVELOPMENT, AS WELL AS INCREASE THE COST AND RISK, FOR VENDORS.

VENDORS WERE SIGNIFICANTLY EXCLUDED FROM THE TGDC CONSIDERATIONS;
NEITHER VENDOR COSTS FOR DESIGN AND TESTING, NOR EQUIPMENT COST
ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT OF THE STANDARDS, WERE A PART OF THE TGDC
REVIEW; THE USABILITY OF NEW TECHNICAL EQUIPMENT FEATURES UPON ELECTION
OFFICIALS AND POLL WORKERS WERE NOT CONSIDERED; AND, ELECTION
ADMINISTRATION ISSUES WERE INTENTIONALLY EXCLUDED FROM TGDC REVIEW AS
MORE APPROPRIATELY THE VENUE OF THE EAC.

ALTHOUGH THE TGDC VOTED UNANIMOUSLY TO RECOMMEND THE 2007 VVSG
RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE EAC, IT WAS CERTAINLY WITH SOME DISCOMFORT AND
MISGIVINGS BY THE ELECTION OFFICIALS ON TGDC. OUR HOPE WAS AN
UNDERSTANDING THAT THIS WAS ONLY THE PRELIMINARY STEP, AND THE EAC WOULD
THEN NEED TO BRING THE MANY OTHER INTERESTED PARTIES INTO THE LOOP,
ESPECIALLY VENDORS AND ELECTION OFFICIALS, AS WELL AS THE MANY THIRD
PARTY NGOS INTERESTED IN FAIR, RELIABLE, ORDERLY, AND COST EFFECTIVE
ELECTION ADMINISTRATION.

**C. SEVEN SEGMENTS OF INTERDISCIPLINARY DISCUSSION:**

**INTRODUCTION;**

Remember that the goal of NIST and TGDC ultimately was to create a "gold
standard" for all features across the board including security,
accessibility, usability, and reliability. There was no attempt to
prioritize these features, nor to assess the impact of costs, nor to
consider how "best practices" of election administration might mitigate
some of the security, reliability, usability, and accessibility
features.

The drive to create a "gold standard" for all features of the 2007 VVSG
recommendations arose in the midst of a drumbeat of an ongoing national
debate on many issues that gathered noise and discord beginning right
after the 2000 presidential election and through the 2004 presidential
election cycle.

Election equipment vendors were attacked for displaying claimed biases
in the 2000 presidential election, calling into question their integrity
and fairness; Digital Response Electronic equipment (DREs), manufactured
and sold by the equipment vendors for the 2004 election cycle was
attacked as lacking both vital security to assure fair and reliable
results and needed security from source code mischief and fraud that
threatened the veracity of balloting results; a hue and cry that hand
counting was the only true method of conducting a reliable ballot
tabulation; claims that DREs needed Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails
(VVPAT) to be trustworthy; accusations that the 2004 presidential
election was stolen from the Democratic candidate by nefarious forces on
behalf of the Republican candidate, and that the use of DREs led to
those results.

This national attention caused considerable pressure on NIST from many
sources to produce the highest possible analysis of existing equipment
and proposed standards with the highest level of security in testing and
in performance.

The final product was almost 500 pages in length, with highly technical
explanations, and a level of detailed analysis and standards that left
very little to discretion or choice. The product was never reviewed on
the basis of what might be the most "practical, reasonable, and cost
effective", nor whether election administration best practices might
mitigate many of the most demanding security and reliability testing and
performance standards being proposed.

The 2007 VVSG recommendations were basically built by disassembling
existing equipment, and rebuilding it with the intent of making it so
totally secure, reliable, accessible, and usable, to be beyond dispute.
In other words, the intent was to create standards for a perfect and
infallible machine, essentially a new Titanic that could never sink
again because of the minute analysis that covered even the thickness of
plates and the quality of the rivets.

The 2007 VVSG recommendations must now themselves now disassembled and
reconstituted with a candid eye on what is "practical, reasonable, and
cost effective", as well as how election administration best practices
might mitigate some of the costlier and esoteric standards.

**These are some of the possible ultimate outcomes:**

1\. Since the equipment manufacturers have taken such a beating in the
courts and the state legislatures, there are signs of movement among
themselves toward mergers, toward going out of business, toward
providing services and not equipment, and toward diversifying to other
more profitable lines of activity. Using these new 2007 standards, and
the costs of testing and certification involved, plus the smaller
markets for sales available in the future, it is conceivable that there
will be no U.S. election equipment manufacturers in the near future.
Foreign manufacturers from Asia or Europe might become the suppliers
because their lower costs will allow them to absorb the cost of testing,
and they won't require sizeable markets to make a profit; or the U.S.
government will have to issue public bidding with federal dollars for
each style of needed equipment and quantity, similar to the Department
of Defense competitive bidding for weapons and airplanes.

2\. There is a real concern that the EAC testing and certification
process will become so infinitely slow and overly expensive that the
vendors can't afford the resources to wait for certification where they
have no immediate recovery of those costs, and where the ultimate buyers
might not pay the price of the new equipment which has been so greatly
increased due to the testing and certification process. Add to this the
fact that a number of states are adding their own state testing and
certification process on top of the federal testing, and the delays and
increased costs escalate even more. This drain on resources, without any
clear expectation of a final product to be sold, may be more of a risk
than vendors are willing to assume. This could lead to states and
counties abandoning the federal VVSG standards, buying cheap generic
equipment, adopting simple and practical state standards, with testing
to be done in other state labs, or even their own stripped down testing
labs. If this were to occur, the federal standards and the federal test
labs become anomalies.

3\. We are already seeing dramatic steps being taken as a result of HAVA
toward the centralizing of administration and processes from county
level to state level, such as the statewide interactive voter
registration systems; the ballot layout, design, and printing of
ballots: and the assignment of auditing tasks. If the costs are so great
that vendors can no longer afford to produce precinct and county level
equipment, then there will be a surge toward election systems such as
these: early voting mail in ballots only sent to every registered voter,
with the ballots returning to one or more centralized voting center for
tabulation by huge, sophisticated, costly, extremely fast and sensitive
optical scan equipment purchased and owned by the states and run by
state employees. Counties demand simple, cheap, and easy equipment which
they can afford through tight county budgets, and which can be operated
by part time minimum wage poll workers; if they can't get this
equipment, the move toward state systems may be inevitable with poll
workers and voting precincts a thing of the past. Vendors can then
afford to design, test, and produce these expensive and sophisticated
state election systems because "simple and cheap" is no longer the
product bar.

4\. Finally, we are seeing an exponential explosion of information
technology and an increasing reliance on the Internet for much of our
communication, of our financial transactions, our purchasing, and our
news and consumer research. The Department of Defense has been working
diligently to design a secure Internet-based system for overseas
civilian and military personnel. Several states have implemented some
form of Internet voting under certain circumstances already for these
overseas voters. Young voters are increasing seeking and demanding that
we consider designing and developing Internet voting within the next
generation. If the costs of designing and testing of new precinct based
election equipment gets out of hand, and the potential costs of
statewide state-owned voting centers for sophisticated optical scan
equipment reaches a certain magic number, then the entire grassroots,
community based voting that we have known for hundreds of years will
collapse, and the drive will be toward designing secure Internet voting
systems for each state, abandoning the tradition cost of buying quickly
antiquated and controversial machine technology, and moving toward
sophisticated software technology for Internet voting. There may still
be a need for machines available in each county for the handicapped and
visually impaired who can't access computer based Internet voting, but
that cost of machines will be minimal compared to the needs of today for
precinct based equipment for both regular and handicapped or visually
impaired voters.

**What specifically can be done with the proposed VVSG standards and
with the certification testing procedures and infrastructure, to reduce
the cost of the voting systems without compromising core functions of
the voting system? (#1)**

1\. Grandfathering of older equipment that has already been tested and
certified under older standards so that updates and firmware
modifications that go through certification do not trigger the need for
the entire piece of equipment to be certified under the newer standards
(a significant cost issue for both vendors and end-users). There will
need to be a bright line drawn as to what might impact core functions,
but some things will be clear such as altering the casing of Automarks
to reduce weight.

2\. "Device-specific hardware cryptographic requirements" of the 2007
VVSG recommendations may be too burdensome, and impose severe burdens on
the end-users. These requirements would match up each piece of equipment
with the chip or card that will be inserted to tally the digital votes
and will have an exact cryptographic code so that the equipment and the
chips or cards cannot be mismatched between different precincts
(election officials can no longer bring in extra machines to help out in
busy precincts nor to help out where machines go down and need
replacement).

3\. Testing will be required to go beyond just analyzing ballot
processing but also analyzing the source codes, so rather than just
"input and output" analysis, it will follow the "wires" throughout the
system. This "end to end" testing greatly increases the burden and cost
of testing and certification.

4\. Quality assurance now just requires that a vendor knows that its
software does do what it is supposed to do before turning it over to a
test lab; however, the new standards say that the labs should look at
and review a "technical development package" that must be prepared by
the vendor. On the hardware side, the new standards have the same
quality assurance, being the ISO 9000 benchmark for development (these
requirements greatly impact cost of development of new equipment that
will pass these costs on to the end-users.

5\. Previous standards in 1990, 2002, and 2005, provide that the source
code format be reviewed for conformance to defined coding
conventions/constructs. Under the 2007 standards, it appears that an
additional review of source code will include "source logic" in an
effort to detect potential coding errors that may not be caught in
functional testing. Source codes are very different from designer to
designer: they may all work but different reviewers may have different
preferences; this could become very subjective and the review becomes
very ambiguous. All of this will result in additional cost and delay in
the certification process, as well as the time to market/deploy the new
equipment.

**What specifically can be done with the proposed VVSG standards and
certification testing procedures and infrastructure to reduce
time-in-process of a candidate system? (#2)**

1\. Streamline certification of some upgrades.

2\. More testing labs to reduce time-in-process (by reducing backlog).

**What specifically can be done to increase the efficiency and economy
of efforts within the testing process at the federal, state, and local
levels?**

**(#3)**

1\. Establish cross-certification with skilled state testing labs;
encourage states to accept certification of such certified and
established state testing labs such as Florida, Georgia, Texas, or
California in lieu of creating their own state testing labs. Vendors
would then know to seek out one such state lab following federal lab
certification to complete its certification process. This might help
eliminate multiplication of duplicate state testing costs for the same
equipment.

2\. Certify certain state testing labs to federal standards for
outsourcing of overload at federal labs; vendors must go to federal labs
first, but can be outsourced from there to certain state labs.

**How important is the timing of the passage and implementation of the
next iteration of the VVSG? (#4)**

1\. Probably not high on my priority list.

**a. In an ideal world when would you choose to have the next iteration
of the VVSG become effective?**

1\. Maybe 2016.

**How necessary is innovation in voting technology? (#5)**

1\. Considering the lead time necessary for research and development,
coupled with the demands of the voters for alternative voting systems or
processes, innovation needs to be constant and ongoing.

**a. How can the EAC's program and the VVSG address the desired level of
innovation?**

1\. The innovation class contained in the 2007 VVSG recommendations is
an important component but is too general without much detail. How this
provision is developed and whether very strict or reasonable will
determine the level of innovation being attempted. I am concerned that
the lack of detail on the Review Panel needs considerable attention as
to the makeup, role and scope of the Panel. We must be acutely aware of
the need to avoid addressing with too high a specificity the theoretical
issues of software independence, core requirements, and cryptography,
currently in vogue in academic circles, for the innovation class of
future equipment. Broader vision, inclusiveness and flexibility will be
needed to consider the expected impact of new technologies emerging in
future years. The innovation class should not hold hardware and software
advances to unyielding standards of existing hardware and software
designs.

b\. **What are the possible sources of capital to reach the desired
level of innovation i.e. from the vendor? From Congress? From private
enterprise? From academia?**

1\. I assume the vendors have difficulty investing large resources into
ventures with an uncertain future of testing and certification, as well
as possible market prices that are unacceptable to end-users. I also
assume that resources from the private sector are limited until the
innovations show promise of marketability, which can be way down the
road. Service seems to be the chosen path of election equipment vendors
for the foreseeable future, unless there is a truly hot discovery with
an immediate market, as in the case of Automarks. I am also skeptical of
the resources that academia can bring to bear on system innovation
design and certification costs; they will be helpful as consultants on
engineering and design, but won't frontload cash investment into the
market place. That leaves us with Congress, perhaps the worst choice as
those resources come with a high price, usually onerous strings attached
including federal oversight and audits.

**Every voting systems stakeholder shares risks with other stakeholders
and experience risks unique to their constituents. (#6)**

**a. What risks do you view as being shared?**

1\. Personally I view all the risks as being shared. To do otherwise is
to embrace a finger pointing game with everyone else when things go
wrong.

**b. What risks do you view as being unique to your sector?**

1\. Election administrators don't have to manufacture machines, worry
about paper stock, parts, or supplies, but similarly vendors don't have
to face constituents, precinct workers, and legislators, or get elected.
As a state election official, the perception of voters of whether an
election is fair, easy, friendly, reliable, and successful comes from
their brief interaction with the totality of election management; we
have to make it all come together right to maintain that high level of
confidence, pride in citizenship, and ease of participation so necessary
to keep democracy successful.

**c. Has there been an adequate assessment of those risks?**

1\. No, and this was articulated by the previous Roundtable.

**d. in the absence of an adequate assessment of those risks, how can
those risks be prioritized and mitigated?**

1\. Not particularly well.

**How do you prioritize the features (i.e. security, accessibility,
usability, and reliability) of a voting system?**

1\. 1) reliability, 2) security, 3) accessibility, and 4) usability.

**a. What are the best ways to strike a balance between these sometimes
competing features?**

1\. First, you have to strike a balance between the capabilities of
election administration to address various levels of these features, and
what specifically can only be done by the equipment. Creating standards
for equipment that seeks to do it all, and do not trust any interface
with election administrators, is ivory tower thinking. The two have to
be balanced. Using election administration "best practices" can save
considerable costs if trained and trusted, to make use of practical,
cost effective, and reasonable equipment for a fair, reliable,
trustworthy election. I doubt there is every a perfect machine of any
kind, and I doubt that every risk inherent in every machine can be
eliminated. The human factors that interact with the equipment to
significantly reduce the risk of errors of the end users are the most
cost effective means of keeping a county based election system
functioning at the grass roots level, which America has loved and
enjoyed for over 200 years.

In addition, you have to balance the known and experienced risks against
the theoretical fear of low probability risks; if equipment standards
and competent testing can address the known and experienced risks of
various kinds of equipment, and election administration processes can
address the low probability theoretical risks with best practices, you
have a practical, reasonable balancing that bring a confluence of forces
which machines alone cannot accomplish.

There may be to be ongoing levels of cooperation and partnerships
between states to share testing labs, risk assessments, training
protocols for precinct workers, and best practices to keep all states at
a higher uniform level of good election administration in our modern
age. Matching grant funds from the federal government can help this
process. Also, the future seems to foretell the eventuality of
multi-channeling alternatives for voters, from Internet voting, to phone
voting, to early voting, to precinct or voting center voting, to all
mail in ballots for certain precincts or counties in every state. Such a
balancing of alternatives may also help keep down the overall cost of
equipment and maintenance for elections.