BBV:Paper Trail Endorsed - National Science Fndtn & Kennedy School of Govt

Mods: This is a press release and can be posted in full.

Capturing the Vote Accurately in an Information Age
Kennedy School Report Outlines Best Practices for E-Voting

The Best Practices Report is available on the Web: <A
HREF="http://www.designforvalues.org/voting/bestpract.html">
http://www.designforvalues.org/voting/bestpract.html</A>

CAMBRIDGE, MA – A new report released today outlines a set of “best
practices” for effecting the most practical, fair and effective use of electronic
voting in American elections.

The Best Practices Report, commissioned by Harvard’s Kennedy School of
Government and the National Science Foundation (NSF), is the result of a daylong
Symposium on Voting and Vote Counting June 1 at the Kennedy School. The symposium
brought together an array of technologists, policy makers, academics, and
industry representatives to discuss technical and operational policies in the
information age.

Those best practices identified in the report include:

*

Certain immediate steps must be taken, including the development of standards
by the Election Assistance Commission and the National Institute of Standards
and Technology;
*

The process is even more important than the underlying technology;
*

A hybrid of paper and electronic systems provides the most effective voting
system;
*

Good voting systems require good design standards;
*

Openness of a voting process is critical for the perception of legitimacy of
that process;
*

Election systems must have built-in auditing capabilities;
*

The general approach to building and implementing elections processes must be
carefully targeted.


Jean Camp, Kennedy School associate professor of public policy, who helped
organize the Symposium, called the report a valuable learning tool for decision
makers across the country.

“Technology, rather than providing a simple panacea for innumerable voting
problems, has introduced a host of new election woes, and technologists alone
cannot address those problems,” she said. “This Best Practices Report will
serve as a guideline for those government officials and volunteers who support the
act of voting.”

The Best Practices Report is available on the Web:
http://www.designforvalues.org/voting/bestpract.html

And I like seeing the word audit being used, finally!

It's about auditing.

I will say one thing, though. We'll need to get very specific, in order to win this. I just learned that in my county, King County, they dropped the audit requirement back to the level of complete meaninglessness. We have optical scan, but they now have NO plan to audit even one polling place by comparing paper with machine.

What they are going to do -- and look how deceptive this language is -- is "randomly select one polling place" and then "select one ballot question" from that polling place -- NOTE: Selecting the ballot question is NOT random! -- and ONLY that one cherry-picked ballot question in one polling place (out of 500) will be compared paper-to-machine.

We use uncertified optical scan software, of course.

Bev

my county also uses optical scan, but no auditing in place unless the losing candidate asks for it. How often do you see a losing candidate ask for a recount (audit) during their concession speech, or at any other time. Citizens in my county are not allowed to demand audits, thus if the machine was rigged we would never know if there is no audit system in place.