An Important New Proposal for Voting Machines

If you’ve wondered why voting machine problems seem to occur again and again around the country and what can be done about it, the Brennan Center at New York University School of Law has an answer. A report released last week by the non-partisan organization, Voting System Failures: A Database Solution, found that in the absence…

Voting results in New Jersey should not be mysterious

Author: Penny M. Venetis Last week in South Carolina, an unknown, unemployed veteran (recently indicted on felony obscenity charges) who did not even campaign, beat a well-financed political veteran in the Democratic Senate primary election. Even the White House called the results “mysterious.” Allegations have been made that South Carolina’s touch-screen computerized voting machines were…

Best Practices for Voting Systems Supporting Military and Overseas Voters

Author: Pamela Smith Given the current focus on UOCAVA implementation, the NIST draft Information System Security Best Practices for UOCAVA-Supporting Systems (referred to here as the Draft) is a timely and important document. A summary of security standards and guidelines “deemed most applicable for jurisdictions using IT systems to support UOCAVA voting” is indeed necessary at a…

Dominion Sues to Stop New York City Contract with ES&S

Guest Author Update I, 2/19/10 – Court documents posted, links here In a surprise move, Dominion Voting Systems has filed an Article 78 lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court in Albany to stop the New York City Board of Elections from awarding a $70 million dollar contract for new voting machines to ES&S. If a temporary restraining order is…

Software in Dangerous Places

Author: Dan Wallach, Rice University  This article was posted at Freedom to Tinker and is reposted here with permission of the author. Software increasingly manages the world around us, in subtle ways that are often hard to see. Software helps fly our airplanes (in some cases, particularly military fighter aircraft, software is the only thing keeping them…

Hurry Up and Wait: Tennessee Senate Delays, Weakens Voter Confidence Act in the Opening hours of the 2010 Session

On the basis of several highly questionable assumptions, the Tennessee General Assembly has voted to delay implementation of paper ballot voting until 2012, and to eliminate the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act’s provision for routine hand-counted audits of computer vote tallies. On Tuesday, the Tennessee Senate passed House Bill 614 on a vote of 22-10. The Senate’s passage of…