Electronic voting alternative offered

CONSORTIUM PLANS TO UNVEIL ITS OWN `SOUND, SECURE' SYSTEM

By Elise Ackerman

Mercury News

 

There are few things engineers enjoy more than solving problems. So when word spread in the scientific community about problems with newfangled electronic voting machines, a group of engineers figured they would get together and fix the durn things themselves.

Thus was born the Open Voting Consortium, a group of volunteer programmers and professors dedicated to developing a ``technically sound, accurate, secure, inexpensive, uniform and open'' voting system.

The consortium will demonstrate a version of its system at 10 a.m. today at the Santa Clara County government building at 70 W. Hedding St., with the hope of showing elected officials and election officials that computers can be safely used to record and tally votes.

``We are trying to illustrate how this could be done,'' said Arthur Keller, an associate professor of computer science at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Keller said the group is seeking funding for systematic research into electronic voting issues, which so far has been in short supply.

Counties around the country have adopted touch-screen voting machines in response to the embarrassing spectacle of the Florida recount in 2000. Touch-screens, which were used in Santa Clara County in the March primary, are considered more accurate than punch-card machines and more accessible for disabled voters.

But computer security experts who have examined the voting machines warn they are susceptible to fraud and programming errors. Critics say that a paper receipt also known as a voter-verified paper ballot would help protect votes. However, none of the main voting equipment companies has yet incorporated such a feature.

Increasing public trust

Alan Dechert, Sacramento-based software developer who founded the consortium, said the group's voting system not only includes a paper ballot but also costs much less than systems currently on the market because it is built using open-source software and commodity hardware.

By using open-source software, which is available for public review, Dechert hopes to increase public trust in computerized voting systems. A key concern of opponents of touch-screen voting machines is that the computer code that records and tallies votes is considered a closely guarded corporate secret. Often, the automated script used to test the accuracy of a voting machine before an election is also treated as a trade secret.

``We are not in favor of having a public process run by private companies that want to keep everything a secret,'' Dechert said. The consortium posts its software at SourceForge.net, a popular host of open-source development projects.

The consortium's system is simple. A ballot is displayed on the screen of an ordinary PC and a voter makes his or her choices by touching the screen, moving the computer mouse, or hitting arrow keys. Once the ballot is cast, a software program converts the ions into a bar code and prints a paper copy of the ballot.

The bar code allows the computerized counting system to quickly determine the results of an election and it also allows a worried voter to walk over to a separate computer, scan the code and make sure his or her choices were recorded correctly. To protect the privacy of visually impaired voters, the choices are read back by an automated voice and played over earphones.

There are other built-in safeguards: Electronic backup ballots are stored in XML files, rather than a more complex computer database and the paper ballots are encased in privacy folders until deposited in a ballot box.

Ted Selker, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert in electronic voting, said the system could be problematic if it creates extra steps for voters or poll workers. ``If you add more complexity, you add more errors,'' he said.

Funding minimal

But Selker praised the effort for calling attention to the need for publicly funded research into voting systems. Though federal and state governments have provided billions of dollars for the purchase of new machines, research funding has been minimal.

Selker noted that other countries, such as Australia and Brazil, have actively supported the development of new voting systems. The Australian Capital Territory underwrote the cost of an open-source electronic voting system that was first used in 2001.

Brazil's system is not open-source, but it is based on a design created by government researchers. ``I'm not saying they do a perfect job, but they have a tremendous improvement in people's belief in the government because of this,'' Selker said.