TY - CONF
T1 - Pre-election testing and post-election audit of optical scan voting terminal memory cards
AU - Davtyan, Seda
AU - Kentros, Sotiris
AU - Kiayias, Aggelos
AU - Michel, Laurent
AU - Nicolaou, Nicolas C.
AU - Russell, Alexander
AU - See, Andrew
AU - Shashidhar, Narasimha K.
AU - Shvartsman, Alexander A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The work of VoTeR Center in the State of Connecticut is funded by the Office of the Connecticut Secretary of the State (SOTS), and we function in close contact with the SOTS Office personnel. We offer the State an independent, objective analysis of the voting technologies offered by several vendors, we advise the State on selecting and administering the voting equipment for its election needs, and we are not associated with any of the voting technology vendors. The evaluations of the voting technology are performed at the VoTeR Center Lab at the University of Connecticut. These include hands-on evaluations, exploration of possible attack vectors, physical integrity checks of the terminals and memory cards, and mitigation strategies. It is worth pointing out that the VoTeR center is not involved in the State’s policies for choosing a vendor to procure the voting technology, but limited to evaluating these technologies before deployment and use by the State. In this sense the VoTeR center is a third party independent technical consulting resource for the State of Connecticut.
Publisher Copyright:
© EVT 2008 - 2008 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop. All rights reserved.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - Optical scan electronic voting machines employ software components that are customized for each specific election. Such software components are critical from a security and integrity point of view, as they define ballot layout and outcome reporting facilities. The possibility of these components to be tampered with presents a major concern as incorrect election results may be produced due to either malicious interference or accidental corruption. Erroneous results caused by tampering or corruptions can go unnoticed in the absence of testing and auditing, and the errors may not be detectable by election officials/poll workers using the pre-election testing procedures that rely on the machines themselves. This paper presents an actual auditing process for the AccuVote Optical Scan Voting Terminal (AV-OS) (manufactured by Premier Election Solutions) and the ensuing results from a recent statewide audit, showing that thorough auditing of a large sample of voting hardware, specifically the memory cards that contain custom software components, is both practical and informative. We argue that memory card audits are crucial in providing timely information and maintaining the integrity of the electoral process. To substantiate this claim, we present as part of our results hard evidence of inadequate reliability of certain hardware components used with the voting terminals, and indications of marginal procedural compliance on the part of the poll workers. These audits were performed without any access to the manufacturer's source code or the documentation regarding the design or the internal workings of the AV-OS terminal. We conclude the paper with several observations based on what was learned during the memory card audit process and offer recommendations aimed at enhancing the integrity of elections. The audits presented in this paper were performed on request of the Office of the Secretary of the State of Connecticut.
AB - Optical scan electronic voting machines employ software components that are customized for each specific election. Such software components are critical from a security and integrity point of view, as they define ballot layout and outcome reporting facilities. The possibility of these components to be tampered with presents a major concern as incorrect election results may be produced due to either malicious interference or accidental corruption. Erroneous results caused by tampering or corruptions can go unnoticed in the absence of testing and auditing, and the errors may not be detectable by election officials/poll workers using the pre-election testing procedures that rely on the machines themselves. This paper presents an actual auditing process for the AccuVote Optical Scan Voting Terminal (AV-OS) (manufactured by Premier Election Solutions) and the ensuing results from a recent statewide audit, showing that thorough auditing of a large sample of voting hardware, specifically the memory cards that contain custom software components, is both practical and informative. We argue that memory card audits are crucial in providing timely information and maintaining the integrity of the electoral process. To substantiate this claim, we present as part of our results hard evidence of inadequate reliability of certain hardware components used with the voting terminals, and indications of marginal procedural compliance on the part of the poll workers. These audits were performed without any access to the manufacturer's source code or the documentation regarding the design or the internal workings of the AV-OS terminal. We conclude the paper with several observations based on what was learned during the memory card audit process and offer recommendations aimed at enhancing the integrity of elections. The audits presented in this paper were performed on request of the Office of the Secretary of the State of Connecticut.
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M3 - Paper
AN - SCOPUS:84983492441
T2 - 2008 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop, EVT 2008, co-located with the 17th USENIX Security Symposium
Y2 - 28 July 2008 through 29 July 2008
ER -