[LINK] Evaluating the Security of Electronic Voting Systems

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

Evaluating the Security of Electronic Voting Systems
http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~seclab/projects/voting/

Electronic voting systems have been introduced to improve the voting 
process. Since their inception, they have been controversial, because 
both the technologists and the general public realized that they were 
losing direct control over an important part of the voting process: 
counting the votes.

A quote attributed to Stalin says: "Those who cast the votes decide 
nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." It is clear that 
voting systems represent a critical component of a democracy. Although 
the consequences of a malfunctioning electronic voting system are not as 
readily apparent as those for air traffic control or nuclear power plant 
control systems, they are just as important, because the well-being of a 
society depends on them.

While most critical systems are continuously scrutinized and evaluated 
for safety and correctness, electronic voting systems are not subject to 
the same level of scrutiny. A number of recent studies have shown that 
most (if not all) of the electronic voting systems being used today are 
fatally flawed, and that their quality does not match the importance of 
the task that they are supposed to carry out.

In the Summer of 2007, the Security Group of UCSB participated in the 
Top-To-Bottom Review (TTBR) of the electronic voting systems used in 
California. This was a first-of-its-kind review, where the evaluators 
had unprecedented access to the systems' source code, hardware, and 
associated documentation.

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Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au