The Berkeley Blog

Rescuing the mechanical foundations of our democracy

Berkeley had its own problems with the Diebold machines last election, which the Berkeley Daily Planet has done a good job of covering so it was a very encouraging sign to read in an article in the BDP last night that people (many with Berkeley connections) from The Open Voting Consortium have volunteered their time and energy to trying to solve the problem of creating a better way to vote that is secure, fast and voter verifiable. They plan on demonstrating the system they have developed this Thursday in Santa Clara. My congratulations and thanks to them. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Bay Area Programmers Develop Touchscreen Alternative
By JAKOB SCHILLER (03-30-04)

As touchscreen voting machines continue to draw heat from critics pointing to allegations of security vulnerabilities, one group of computer science experts proposes to have the solution.

The Open Voting Consortium (OVC), a nonprofit group with several Bay Area members, recently announced the development of touchscreen voting machine software that uses open source and creates a voter verified paper trail. Recently completed, the software is set to be publicly tested this Thursday, April 1, at the Santa Clara County government offices in San Jose.

...

Taking all the complaints and security vulnerabilities into question, the Open Voting Consortium developed a simple approach; maintain the advantages of a touchscreen system but include the security features that alleviate the current security concerns.

OVC's system, currently in software form only, can be used on regular desktop PCs hooked up to a touchscreen monitor and a standard printer. Like the touchscreen machines now in use, the OVC unit records the vote electronically. But unlike Diebold's machines, the OVC system also automatically produce a paper receipt, which is intended to be the official tally. To ensure accuracy, the paper count is then reconciled against the electronic one stored on the machines.

"Our idea is that the machines should have [a tally] that people can inspect," said Arthur Keller, a computer scientist who teaches part-time at UC Santa Cruz. "You trust the paper and can have much more faith in the process."

The group has written open source software that can be checked by anyone for malicious code that might tamper with votes. Like Linux software for PCs, OVC's code isn't proprietary.
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The machines are still several steps away from making it onto the market. They need to be certified and also need the financial backing of a for-profit producer. One advantage over the Diebold machines, according to OVC members, is that the OVC software can be put on any standard PC. According to Keller, even an older and fairly slow PC can still run the program. Recycling old PCs could potentially cut down on cost, since old PCs can be bought for a fraction of the price of a Diebold machine.

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The Open Voting Consortium's software demonstration will take place this Thursday at 10 a.m. in room 157 at the Santa Clara County government office building located at 70 W. Hedding St. in San Jose. For more information please contact them at (916) 791-0456.

For those looking for more information, the Open Voting Consortium and the Verified Voting organization have lots information on the whole voter-verifiable voting machine issue, and the upcoming The Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference (April 20-23) in Berkeley will have a program devoted to it.

Making sure our votes get accurately counted is at the foundation of democracy. I'm glad that more people are taking it seriously, and that people are volunteering their time and energy to help our country get it right. This is patriotism of the finest kind.

P.S. I sent a version of this post to Dan Gillmor and Dave Farber's IP list last night, which generated follow-ups worth reading on the IP list and on Dan's weblog.

Posted by Geodog at March 31, 2004 11:48 AM | TrackBack