Press release
Voting Standards Guidance Sent to Election Commission
Recommendations for a new set of requirements intended to make future
voting systems more “secure, reliable, and easier for all voters to use” have been submitted in a 598-page report by an advisory panel to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
The recommendations are a “complete rewrite” of similar guidelines
issued in 2005 by the Technical Guidelines Development Committee
(TGDC), an advisory panel established along with the EAC by the Help
America Vote Act of 2002. The TGDC is chaired by the director of the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with technical
support provided by NIST staff.
The EAC is expected to conduct a series of public reviews of the TGDC
recommendations, consider comments made, and then issue a final
version, most likely in 2009. Voting systems will then be required to
meet the final guidelines to receive federal certification.
Key new recommendations made by the TGDC to the EAC include guidelines
that
a.. allow auditing of voting system records independently from the
voting system’s software,
b.. allow each voter to verify the accuracy of their vote before
leaving the polling station,
c.. improve voting system reliability and reduce problems with
failing machines on election day,
d.. tighten security measures through digital signatures and other
means to protect voting system software against unauthorized
alterations, and
e.. ensure voting systems are relatively easy to use accurately based
on the results of laboratory tests in which participants vote in mock
elections.
The report describes a detailed series of technical requirements that
voting systems would have to meet by passing tests conducted by an
accredited laboratory. The EAC ultimately will decide which requirements to adopt in the final VVSG. At that point, accredited laboratories would test voting systems for conformance to the VVSG and would submit their findings to the EAC.
The TGDC’s recommendations are called a “Voluntary Voting System
Guideline (VVSG),” because individual states and U.S. territories
determine their own election laws and thus are not obligated to use
voting systems that have received federal certification.
------------------------------
Posted by Nancy Tobi on Sunday, September 23, 2007 - 06:48 am:
1) The 2007 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG II) (2007)
standards will be adopted in 2007 but effective in 2010. This is the
whole timeline asynchronicity I've described in my Ponzi Scheme
analysis Bev mentions above.
2) The EAC "standards" are actually design specifications for "next
generation" voting technology. In other words, they are not standards
like "ensure every vote is counted". Rather, they are design
specifications like "implement dual programming to ensure software
independence for vote marking and tabulating". In other words, the
VVSG becomes the design specifications that the industry uses to build
their new voting machines. These will then become the available
technology for purchase by those American jurisdictions not wanting to
hand count.
In this manner, the program is NOT voluntary, because it drives the
voting technology market. It DEFINES what will and will not be
available for purchase on the market.
1 | 2
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Bev Harris is executive director of Black Box Voting, Inc. an advocacy group committed to restoring citizen oversight to elections.
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