Electronic Voting Issue Resources

Government Web sites

• EAC - Election Assistance Commission
  • TGDC -- Technical Guidelines Development Committee
• FEC - Federal Election Commission
• NIST Voting Site
• FVAP - Federal Voting Assistance Program

• Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (H.R.2239) sponsored by Rep Rush Holt, D-NJ (introduced 5/22/2003). Status: Referred to the House Committee on House Administration. In December, 2003 Senator Robert Graham introduced a companion bill (S. 1980) into the Senate. It is identical in both title and text to H.R. 2239.
• Massachusetts Division of Elections
  • HAVA Final State Plan (PDF)
  • Voting systems in use by Mass. cities and towns (Excel spreadsheet, 210KB)
    based on directory of elections officers by city/town
• National Association of Secretaries of State
• National Association of State Election Directors
  • NASED Independent Testing Authorities (ITA) program
  • NASED Qualified systems (v1.03) (PDF)
  • NASED Qualified systems (updates to 2/18/04) (PDF)
• Ohio Secretary of State, Electronic Voting Security, Management and Technical Assessment -- contractor reports, detailed product examination and testing
• "[Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth] Blackwell Seeks Improvements and Additional Security Assurances from Electronic Voting Machine Vendors" - press release, December 2, 2003

Standards

• FEC FAQ on Voting System Standards
• FEC 1998 History of Voting System Standards
• FEC 1990 Voting System Standards
• FEC 2002 Voting System Standards
  • Official web site (Word documents)
  • J.L. Hall version (PDF documents)
  • Single PDF document
• FEC 2002 A Plan for Implementing the 2002 Voting System Standards
• HAVA - Help America Vote Act of 2002 html pdf
• IEEE Standards Association
  • SCC 38 - Voting Standards
  • P1583 - Voting Equipment Standard
  • P1622 - Electronic Data Interchange
• IEEE Spectrum Sept. 2004: Standing Up for a Better E-Ballot Box

US voting equipment industry

• Votingindustry.com
  • First tier vendors
    • Sequoia Voting Systems
    • Diebold Election Systems
    • Hart InterCivic
    • Election Systems & Software (ES&S)
  • Second tier vendors
  • Internet Voting Companies, Regional Voting Firms and Other Firms
• Information Technology Association Of America (ITAA) Election Technology Council (ETC)
  • Press Release
  • Statement of Principles
  • ETC Leadership Remarks
  • Frequently Asked Questions
• VerifiedVoting.org vendor list (some international)

International voting equipment industry, with commentary and criticism (examples discussed in US context)

• UK
  • The UK Electoral Commission (UK)
  • Government's consultation on "e-Democracy" (http://www.edemocracy.gov.uk)
  • Foundation for Information Policy Research on "e-Democracy" (http://www.fipr.org/eDemocracy)

• Brazil
  • "Microsoft and Modulo Products Safeguard the Brazilian Elections", Microsoft TechNet Archive 1998
  • "The importance of recounting votes", Michael Stanton, Computing Institute of the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói RJ - November 13, 2000 (via R.Mercuri)
  • "Voto-E" (http://www.votoseguro.org)
    (Babelfish translation)

• Canada
  • "100,000 ballots to be cast online", Jen Horsey - London Free Press, November 10, 2003
    
    
• Australia
  • Australian Election Commission
  • "Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting" by Kim Zetter, Wired News Nov. 03, 2003
  • Software Improvements Pty. Ltd, Canberra AU
    • Electronic voting and counting system (eVACS®)

US academic research, commentary and criticism on voting systems and technology (samples)

• Ron Rivest: Voting Resources Page

• Rebecca Mercuri: Electronic Voting Update

• David Dill: VerifiedVoting.org

• Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project (MIT website)
  • Reports
    • "A Preliminary Assessment of the Reliability of Existing Voting Equipment", 3/30/2001 (PDF)
    • "Voting - What Is, What Could Be", July 2001
    • "Where We Have Been, Where We Are Going", January 2003
    • "Voting in Massachusetts" (PDF)
    • "Immediate Steps to Avoid Lost Votes in the 2004 Presidential Election: Recommendations for the Election Assistance Commission" (PDF)
  • The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project has a mailing list for new voting technology and election information. You can join the list at http://lists.hss.caltech.edu/listinfo/votingtech, where archives of that list are available.
    
• Dr. Rebecca Mercuri (Harvard)
  • "Voting-Machine Risks," November, 1992
  • "Corrupted Polling," November, 1993
  • "Electronic Vote Tabulation Checks & Balances" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania) October 27, 2000
  • "Voting Automation (Early and Often?)," November 2000
  • "The FEC Proposed Voting Systems Standard Update," submitted to the Federal Election Commission on September 10, 2001
  • "A Better Ballot Box?", October 2002
  • "Verification for Electronic Balloting Systems," Rebecca T. Mercuri and Peter G. Neumann, Chapter 3, Secure Electronic Voting, November 2002.
  • "Electronic Voting Best Practices", summary from "Voting, Vote Capture and Vote Counting" - June 2004 symposium, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
    
• Prof. David Dill (Stanford), VerifiedVoting.org
  • H.R.2239/S.1980 Endorsers
  • Resolution on Electronic Voting
  • Resolution signers (1719 technologist signers as of 2/20/2004)
    
• Dr. Avi Rubin (Johns Hopkins)
  • "Analysis of an Electronic Voting System" (PDF), July 2003 (Kohno, Stubblefield, Rubin, Wallach).
    
    
• The January/February 2004 issue of IEEE Security & Privacy, theme "E-Voting: Can you trust it?", with guest editors David L. Dill, Aviel D. Rubin
  • "Election Security: Perception and Reality" - David Evans, Nathanael Paul
  • "Hack-a-Vote: Security Issues with Electronic Voting Systems" - Jonathan Bannet, David W. Price, Algis Rudys, Justin Singer, Dan S. Wallach
  • "Secret-Ballot Receipts: True Voter-Verifiable Elections" - David Chaum

   

• Prof. Ted Selker (MIT)
  • "The case for computerized voting", interview with Simson Garfinkel, September 4, 2003

• ACM Position on Voting Systems
  
• Computerworld (trade magazine)
  • "50M Electronic Votes Could Be Insecure, Say Researchers"
  • "ITAA blasts e-voting critic, calls testimony 'misleading'"
  • "Security experts, vendors face off on e-voting "
    
• Voting systems and alternatives for election reform
  • Social Choice and Individual Values. Kenneth J. Arrow. Wiley, 1951. (Yale University Press, 1990)
    Fundamental principlesof elections, axiomatic approach; influential on voting theory
  • The Theory of Committees and Elections. Duncan Black. Cambridge University Press, 1958. (Kluwer Academic Publications, 1998)
  • Collective Choice and Social Welfare. Amartya Kumar Sen. Holden-Day, 1970. (North-Holland, 1984)
  • "The Fairest Vote of All", Partha Dasgupta and Eric Maskin. Scientific American, March 2004, pp 92-95. Review of voting theory and arguments for a new "true majority rule" method, based on voter ranking of candidates. Based on "On the Robustness of Majority Rule and Unanimity Rule", Dasgupta and Maskin, 1998-2003.
  • Point, Click, Vote. R. Michael Alvarez and Thad Hall. The Brookings Institution, February 2004. Should Americans be able to use the Internet to vote?

Nonprofit organizations

• American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
  • Joint Report and Recommendations on Electronic Voting, ACLU of Northern California, ACLU of Southern California and ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties - March 2004 (PDF)
• League of Women Voters (LWV)
• Lawyers' Committee on Civil Rights
  • Towards National Standards for Elections - David H. Harris, Jr
    Appendix C
  • Statements to Conyers Minority Hearings , December 7 2005
    • Barbara R. Arnwine, Exec. Dir., Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights
    • Jon Greenbaum, Director, Voting Rights Project, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights
• Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
  • Recommendations of the Brennan Center for Justice and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights for Improving Reliability of Direct Recording Electronic Voting Systems
• National Voting Rights Institute (NVRI)
• MassVOTE / BostonVOTE
• Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
• Verified Voting Foundation
  • Verified Voting Foundation is working with other voter protection groups to provide a technical election monitoring program called TechWatch.
    

Other press, citizen and activist commentary on voting technology (samples)

• Black Box Voting (Bev Harris)
• Equal Justice Foundation (Chuck Corry)
• VotingIntegrity.org (Boston-Cambridge Alliance for Democracy)
• CrisisPapers.org: Electoral Integrity
• Press coverage - 2003
• Press coverage - 2004
• Press coverage - 2005

Compiled by Alex Brown <a.brown@ieee.org>
Comments and contributions welcome