Thursday, June 16, 2005
What price electronic voting? (Miami-Dade County makes a choice)
Miami-Dade County has decided to purchase optical scanners and use paper ballots and discard its DRE voting machines. Here's the link to a copy of the formal report:
http://reformcoalition.org/Ressources/Initial%20Report%20from%20Supervisor%20of%20Elections.pdf
and then discussion of the background prior to the decision can be found at these various links:
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/story/0,10801,101146,00.html
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2005/06/06/m1a_voting_0606.html
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/11759284.htm
other States are also watching this decision too:
http://wvgazette.com/webtools/email/Editorials/Viewpoint/2005060139
Maryland currently has its DRE machines - and the cost of these per vote cast in 2004 was around $50 - ($80M in total). And this is not including ongoing support and upgrade costs nor backend County level costs. Clearly there are many more urgent uses for such funds than counting votes at $50+ each.
Given the trust weaknesses with DREs machines that NIST have documented as part of their HAVA work and their VVSG2 draft (see p96 here: http://vote.nist.gov/VVSG2%20final.doc) - it can be viewed as premature for anyone to make a longterm commitment to this technology prior to formal concrete specifications and certification being available that the EAC is now working on. Dade county is being very smart with their decision.
Just like other public works engineering projects that the United States has developed - this is something that the private sector has tried - but now needs to be underpinned by a collective solution now that a deeper understanding of the needs has emerged. There are many precedences in history to guide us here.
Indeed in the TLV approach we have anticipated this development (see the primer link to left) - where a publicly developed set of programs that conforms to the EAC requirements and uses internationally defined technology specifications and is certified and maintained as publically open source is built and made available to solution integrators. Those solution integrators can then work for a State to provide a low-cost implementation using off-the-shelf computers and scanners.
This is akin to the government building and servicing the roads, and then letting people buy and run the cars they need over them. It is undoubtably the software and computer solution model that just makes sense in todays marketplace.
Miami-Dade have made the right solution - saved their citizens a large amount of money, and positioned themselves for the future. The scanners are an integral part of upgrading to an advanced trusted voting solution in the future once the infrastructure for that is publically available.
To set the scene here - the Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is already developing the first phase of that open source solution base and during the remainder of 2005 and into 2006 that will mature and grow to encompass the requirements that EAC produce during their review process in the coming months.
http://reformcoalition.org/Ressources/Initial%20Report%20from%20Supervisor%20of%20Elections.pdf
and then discussion of the background prior to the decision can be found at these various links:
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/story/0,10801,101146,00.html
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2005/06/06/m1a_voting_0606.html
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/11759284.htm
other States are also watching this decision too:
http://wvgazette.com/webtools/email/Editorials/Viewpoint/2005060139
Maryland currently has its DRE machines - and the cost of these per vote cast in 2004 was around $50 - ($80M in total). And this is not including ongoing support and upgrade costs nor backend County level costs. Clearly there are many more urgent uses for such funds than counting votes at $50+ each.
Given the trust weaknesses with DREs machines that NIST have documented as part of their HAVA work and their VVSG2 draft (see p96 here: http://vote.nist.gov/VVSG2%20final.doc) - it can be viewed as premature for anyone to make a longterm commitment to this technology prior to formal concrete specifications and certification being available that the EAC is now working on. Dade county is being very smart with their decision.
Just like other public works engineering projects that the United States has developed - this is something that the private sector has tried - but now needs to be underpinned by a collective solution now that a deeper understanding of the needs has emerged. There are many precedences in history to guide us here.
Indeed in the TLV approach we have anticipated this development (see the primer link to left) - where a publicly developed set of programs that conforms to the EAC requirements and uses internationally defined technology specifications and is certified and maintained as publically open source is built and made available to solution integrators. Those solution integrators can then work for a State to provide a low-cost implementation using off-the-shelf computers and scanners.
This is akin to the government building and servicing the roads, and then letting people buy and run the cars they need over them. It is undoubtably the software and computer solution model that just makes sense in todays marketplace.
Miami-Dade have made the right solution - saved their citizens a large amount of money, and positioned themselves for the future. The scanners are an integral part of upgrading to an advanced trusted voting solution in the future once the infrastructure for that is publically available.
To set the scene here - the Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is already developing the first phase of that open source solution base and during the remainder of 2005 and into 2006 that will mature and grow to encompass the requirements that EAC produce during their review process in the coming months.
# posted by DRRW @ 12:27 PM 
