By Joris Evers
IDG News Service, San Francisco Bureau
24-11-2003
Responding to concerns about the reliability of electronic voting machines, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said Friday that all such machines used in the state must produce paper receipts by 2006.
Shelley also set new software testing and auditing requirements as well as new security protocols for manufacturers of the touch-screen machines used to record and tabulate votes in California, the most populous U.S. state, according to a statement.
Beginning July 1, 2005, no county or city may purchase an electronic voting system that does not produce a "voter verified paper audit trail." As of July 2006, all systems used in California must produce voter-verifiable paper audit trails, the statement said.
California voters who cast ballots on the touch-screen machines will be able to view a printout of their ballot to verify their vote before actually casting it. The paper ballots will be kept at the polling stations and will help ensure the accuracy of votes cast and the tallies conducted at the end of elections, particularly when recounts are required.
Shelley created a technical oversight committee and announced random field testing on election days to ensure the machines work properly. He also called upon the U.S. federal government to improve its processes of testing voting machines.
The announcement follows the creation of a task force by Shelley in February this year in response to concerns over the security of voting machines, also called Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines. The group consisted of computer experts, election officials, members of the general public and representatives of the disabled community.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties organization, hailed Shelley's decision as a "courageous and important step" in response to the growing public concern about the security of voting machines. EFF hopes California will lead the U.S. in implementing secure electronic voting standards, the organization said in a statement.
Electronic voting is not yet widely used in California. In last month's gubernatorial recall election 9 percent of registered voters in four counties voted electronically, said Saskia Mills, a spokeswoman for the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that promotes the use of technology for voting purposes.
The California announcement comes on the same day a group of computer scientists and activists joined to form the National Committee on Voting Integrity (NCVI) and asked U.S. presidential candidates to take a position on the issue of electronic voting.
The NCVI is chiefly concerned with new computerized voting systems, many of which are being acquired as voting districts across the nation seek to comply with the requirements of the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
