ALSO VISIT

The Election Assistance Commission, set up by the 2002 Help America Vote Act to provide nationwide oversight of election processes and to seek to prevent any debacle resembling the 2000 Florida recount, has voiced support for "paper verification" and "enhanced security measures" to guarantee legitimacy of touch-screen votes. For some time, verified voting activists have been troubled by the unwillingness of members of Congress to support legislation to require a paper record of electronic votes until the EAC makes its recommendations.

A number of "red-team" security tests, advanced studies and analyses of machines used in primaries this spring, have found serious flaws in the electronic systems not only prevent the possibility of recount but may lead to inaccurate vote tallies and may even fail to register a significant number of voters. Electronic ?event logs? have reportedly failed to capture even the existence of a number of votes, let alone register the "intent of the voter" as mandated by law in many states, specifically Florida.

Under increasing pressure from specialists, concerned citizens and activists, the Chairman of the Commission, DeForest Soaries, has issued a public statement in which he suggests "paper verification" and "parallel monitoring, chain of custody, testing practices" are necessary means to securing the electronic ballot, and may be among official recommendations made by the EAC in its official report on how to implement the HAVA for this fall's election.

Soaries also noted the need for private corporate manufacturers to "submit their certified software to the National Software Reference Library (NSRL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)" to "facilitate the tracking of software version usage" through a process designed "to meet the needs of the law enforcement community for rigorously verified data that can meet the exacting requirement of the criminal justice system."

On 17 June, the EAC announced it had released $861 million in government funds for states to improve their elections standards and procedures in accordance with HAVA. At the time, there was some question as to whether recommendations to use the money "meet six voting system standards" would provide enough direction to ensure that security measures such as paper trails, voter verification and chain of custody provisions be implemented to ensure the use of electronic systems would be secure, legitimate and legal.

Election reform is crucial in a number of areas where various states are currently at risk of violating their own laws if standing election processes are used in November. A U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report found serious violations of civil rights in 2000 Florida election, where voters were actually prevented from casting their ballots, or where ballots were disqualified for technicalities unrelated to the voter's right to vote.

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU has studied issues related to the election and to processes in Florida which might risk disenfranchising thousands. The Brennan Center has praised the state of Florida for withdrawing its proposed "felons purge list", which would have removed thousands of names from voter registration rolls, even where voting rights had already been restored or in cases where felons had immigrated from other states and to whom Florida?s felon-voting ban would not apply.

The Brennan Center has also been asked to conduct an independent study of electronic voting technology. The study produced an extensive report, validated by leading computer scientists, which makes a series of minimum necessary recommendations to ensure the security and legitimacy of electronically-cast ballots. The Brennan Center found serious physical security flaws, including the possibility of last-minute software upgrades that could alter the entire vote-recording and counting process as well as the revelation that "all 32,000 of Maryland's touch-screen terminals had the same locks and keys, making every machine accessible to anyone with one of the keys. The keys could also be easily reproduced at three local hardware stores."

The study also found that measures to guarantee the security and accuracy of "chain of custody" of the machines and their physical and encrypted contents were inadequate to meet the standards set forth in law for guaranteeing a legitimate vote-count. The Brennan Center suggests a team of independent security specialists be hired to monitor the use of the machines on a technical basis, to ensure that votes recorded by such machines will be accurate when read or reported.

The findings of the Brennan Center report, and the new suggestions and policy moves by Chairman Soaries suggest that even as some progress is being made toward recognizing and combating the ineffectiveness of new voting technologies, the election is rapidly approaching and many states still have in place systems which violate their own election laws for verification, security, count and recount procedures. [For more: BC]