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As polling seats account witness figures of early and absconder votes cast, Fortify has released a account pinpointing where snag with e-voting could most easily arise in 2008.

Reports from around the country indicate that turnout for the 2008 elections is on way to set involvement account . But after a run of mishaps, meltdowns, and curious coincidences in recent years, electorate may not coolness the cog with which they re voting.

That s troubling to researchers at San Mateo-based Fortify Software , who have put together a account detailing the immediate implications of the American rig of hand-counted dissertation ballots, optical-scan machines, DREs, vote-by-mail, ancient knob machines, and even punchcards, the chad-ridden curse of the 2000 presidential race.

Yes, punchcard secret survey vote is still out there, according to Fortify s Bliss Forsythe. There are still nine counties in Iowa using those, she notes, and of the six secret survey vote methods Fortify reviewed, punchcards order dead last on the listing of preferred secret survey vote techniques. That place s based on their serious harms with both precision and verifiability both by anxious electorate hoping they marked their ballots as intended and by anyone seeking to prove that the final tally is accurate .

Lever skill placed fifth on Fortify s listing -- they re accurate, sure, but the vote is unverifiable. That satisfying ker-thump when you pull the knob only tells you that a vote has been recorded, not that it s the one the constituent intended. A few knob units are still in play, mainly in New York, where living of fracas over the accomplishment of 2002 s Help America Vote Act have delayed implementation of newer secret survey vote machines.

Of course, the newer skill are famously troubled, and bringing up the 4 stain on the listing are direct-recording electronic skill -- the controversial touch-screen DREs, which rely on display taps and proprietary hardware and software to function.

DREs have been at the epicenter of e-voting debate for years, as researchers hack them with simplicity and electorate account disturbing harms in the booth. Folks harms have been angrily denied by manufacturers such as Vote Systems Software, Sequoia Vote Systems and Prime minister Vote Solutions formerly a partition of Diebold ; still, Fortify found that the integer of electorate who ll confront DREs at the polling place has dwindled for the 2008 election.

So what mechanism The secret survey vote system that best combines accuracy, verifiability, incoercibility that is, manufacture it impossible for a constituent to display the inside of his or her secret survey to anyone, manufacture it impossible for anyone else to demand that it be revealed , and solitude is...hand-counted dissertation ballots. Very Norman Rockwell! Behind that are dissertation ballots that are optically scanned, the precision of which is comparable to that of hand-counting and which weighing machine well for widespread use.

Rounding out the zenith three is absconder balloting, which usually relies on optical-scan skill but is also kill to glitches with freedom -- and, because it s done outer surface a polling station, has few solitude or incoercibility protections.

And yet none of these methods is perfect; there is, in fact, probably refusal perfect secret survey vote method, according to Jacob West, who co-authored the study with Forsythe and Brian Chess. Forsythe notes, though, that secret survey vote methods based on open source, as Brazil is using, would inspire more coolness as the convention underwent analysis by anyone who cared to see how the skill were operating. Many of the e-voting harms we ve seen in America could have been spotted in open source, adds West.

On the horizon, there s promising research into systems that would print a acceptance that couldn t be used to show a coercing bash one s ballot, but could be used by the constituent to check that the vote was correctly tabulated. Cryptography is a thing in a secret survey vote method that would involve a randomly generated, two-sheet ballot that effort, Punchscan , is person headed by electronic-cash pioneer David Chaum.

Overall there s progress, as the country recovers from the good intentions of HAVA We threw a horde of federal backing at a difficulty we didn t understand, interpretation West and as companies conclude that harms can t simply be ignored or ascribed to some class of Luddite tassel movement. West interpretation that vote officials and e-voting manufacturers alike could learn from advances made in other kinds of software, as well as from tech-industry advances such as the PCI DSS credit-card refuge standard and the Microsoft-led Trustworthy Computing Safety Improvement Lifecycle SDL .

Forsythe adds that since many vote officials and ballot personnel aren t familiar with technology, schooling is necessary as well -- and that Fortify s curiosity in manufacture the software secure and otherwise ensuring that the underlying skill is right for the commission dovetails with the management wishes to keep the e-voting banter moving after November 4. The breakdown end in e-voting , adds West, shouldn t be the software.

The full Fortify account is available online PDF available here .
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