The 1-2 page paper
Since Nov. 4 is election day in the US and because elections
in the US democracy require a secret ballot (privacy) and
trust in the voting process,
it seems appropriate to turn our attention to evoting.
This year more
US ballots will be
cast on evoting machines than ever before.
Read
E-voting security results 'awful,' says Ohio secretary of state.
Read the introduction, system overview, and conclusions of
Analysis of Electronic Voting systems.
Skim the rest of this paper. This paper is by
respected computer scientists who understand the
technology.
Peruse at least some of the references below. Feel free to
seek your own sources. Then write a 1-2 page paper discussing
whether you think the US is ready to use evoting now.
Be prepared to discuss this on Wednesday.
-
Is America Ready to Vote?
-
STUDY: VOTING SYSTEMS VULNERABLE
This is the Ohio secretary of state's summary of
"The Evaluation & Validation of Election-Related Equipment,
Standards & Testing report", known as EVEREST. At the end,
you will see: EVEREST Report of Findings (PDF).
Click on that to get a pdf file of the report. Look particularly at
pp. 37-45 of the report.
-
Elections: Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of
Electronic Voting Systems Are Under Way, but Key Activities Need
to Be Completed, GAO-05-956 This is the abstract of a 107 page
report from the Government Accounting Office that was released
about three years ago.
You probably do not have the time to read the whole report.
But you might download it and look at Results in Brief.
- Read
E-Voting Does Work By Harris Miller
- Read
Princeton prof hacks e-vote machine
- Read
State, local governments look for ways to comply with HAVA
mandates without busting their budget
- Read
INTRODUCTION OF THE VOTER CONFIDENCE AND INCREASED ACCESSIBILITY
ACT OF 2003 -- HON. RUSH D. HOLT (Extensions of Remarks - May 23, 2003)
Rush Holt has a Ph.D. in Physics. He taught at Swarthmore
in the mid-80's, then went on to run a lab at Princeton University.
He is now a member of the US House of Representatives. He is
a politician who understands technology.
- Read
USACM Policy Brief
E-Voting Technology and Standards
The ACM is one of the two leading organizations of
computer scientists.
- A group of Swarthmore students got involved in the evoting
controversy some years ago. Their main goal is what is sometimes
called "free culture", but they took on
Diebold in 2004. You can find info on their web site at:
Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons
Get the Diebold Memos here! To find out more about
The Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons (not
important for this course), go to:
Free Culture Swarthmore
Finally suggest one or two topics that you would like to see
addressed in seminar this week.