Page 106 - Towards Trustworthy Elections New Directions in Electronic Voting by Ed Gerck (auth.), David Chaum, Markus Jakobsson, Ronald L. Rivest, Peter Y. A. Ryan, Josh Benaloh, Miroslaw Kutylowski, Ben Adida ( (z-lib.org (1)

S. Bruck, D. Jefferson, and R.L. Rivest
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in openness and public control, the need for improved ballot designs, the need
for more voter feedback so voters can catch errors, and obstacles to creating
independent audit trails, especially on electronic machinery.
The current voting process consists of several distinct steps:
First, voters sign in. Three important things happen when voters sign in.
They state who they are. They may be asked for identification (authentication).
And they are given an initialized and official ballot that contains the races for
which the voter is eligible to vote, based on the voter’s residence and/or party
affiliations.
Second, there is a mechanism to capture voters’ selections–for example, a
paper ballot or a panel of levers or buttons. The ballot presents choices to the
voter and the voter selects the preferred alternatives. We call this vote capture.
Third, voters confirm their selections.
Fourth, votes are cast. This is the critical moment for the security of the
ballot. Literally, the voter relinquishes control of the vote, and gives it over to
the vote management system.
Fifth, votes are counted.
Sixth, votes are audited (by recounting a statistical sample of the cast ballots).
Many systems combine steps two, three, and four. We think that both security
and innovation suffer as a consequence.
Security suffers because too much is required of a single, increasingly complex
machine.
Design and innovation suffer because the process for certifying equipment is
“all-at-once”–innovation in one aspect can’t be done without re-certifying the
entire system. The design of vote-capture components and user interfaces should
evolve quickly, without being tied to certification of other parts.
At the same time, we do need strict standards for security of the casting
device and reliability of counting mechanisms. Putting everything in one box
significantly limits the ability to have the best vote-capture components while
achieving a high level of security.
AMVA captures what we consider to be the strengths of both the optical
scanning and direct recording electronic systems.
Though optical scan is perhaps today’s dominant voting technology, it has
its own problems, including the high cost of printing ballots, the inflexibility of
the user interface, and the inaccuracy of the scanners. A good feature of optical
scan is that the ballot is directly filled out by the voter and becomes part of the
audit trail.
Electronic DRE machines (without VVPAT’s) have no printing costs and
offer flexible user interfaces. When issues such as rotating candidate positions
on the ballot and supporting multiple languages on a ballot are considered, it
seems clear that some form of electronic vote entry may someday become the
dominant voting technology. Furthermore, the cost of all forms of electronic
equipment continues to drop rapidly; a machine costing $5,000 today might cost
$500 in a decade.