Secretary of State Debra Bowen released details yesterday about an upcoming review of all electronic voting systems used in California. In a contract with the University of California, the testing will have four components: source code review, penetration testing, documentation, and accessibility.
The teams will be headed by Matthew Bishop, Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Co-Director of the Computer Security Laboratory at UC Davis, and David Wagner, Associate Professor in the Computer Science Division at UC Berkeley, with extensive experience in computer security, cryptography and electronic voting. He is a founding member of the ACCURATE center, which is funded by the National Science Foundation to research ways that technology can be used to improve voting. Other well known names include: Ed Felton, Matt Blaze, and Harri Hursti.
The testing will include three source code review teams, three penetration teams, and three document review teams. The companies have until July 1st to submit source code and documentation. Failure to do so may subject them severe penalties including decertification for the 2008 elections.
The test of any democracy is whether you can trust the results at the ballot box. Across the country, authoritative studies and nationally recognized experts are asking the question: Are our voting systems secure, accurate, reliable and accessible?
There’s good reason for asking the question. In December 2005, California discovered voting system programming code that escaped the review of federal testers. On May 2, 2007, a congressional task force voted to investigate anomalies in 2006 election results in Florida’s 13th Congressional District. These are just two examples that have fueled the debate about whether the systems voters are asked to cast their ballots on are trustworthy and whether the testing processes used to certify voting systems are adequate.
California is facing three statewide elections in 2008, making it even more essential that its voting equipment is secure, accurate, reliable and accessible. That’s why Secretary of State Debra Bowen is entering into a contract with the University of California (UC) to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the voting systems certified for use in California beginning the week of May 14.
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The review is expected to conclude in late July, giving the Secretary of State time to examine the results of the review and determine whether each voting system should retain its current certification, have additional conditions attached to its certification, or be decertified entirely.
Approximately $450 million has been spent or allocated to buy new voting equipment in California over the past few years. The top-to-bottom review will cost approximately $1.8 million and will be paid for by the voting system vendors and federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) money allocated by the Legislature and the Governor in the 2006-07 budget to help answer the fundamental question: Are our voting systems secure, accurate, reliable and accessible?
http://www.ss.ca.gov/...
This is very exciting for all of us that have been worried about evoting systems. While I would prefer that evoting were abolished, if we are going to use the machines, this work is sorely needed. Debra Bowen ran on the promise that evoting problems would be fixed. I, for one, am very happy to see it coming true.
For more information: California Secretary of State - Top to Bottom Voting Systems Review.