Bruce Schneier on Electronic Voting Machine Security
Category: Tech...
Posted Wednesday, November 10, 2004 at 01:56 PM [GMT-6]

Bruce Schneier is a (the?) leading authority on security and security technology. His blog is fairly new, highly technical, but always thought-provoking (even if my most common thought is, "What the heck did he just say?"). Today he has a moderately lengthy post about voting machine security that provides some good background to the issues and a couple of suggested steps that he feels would signficantly address concerns over the use of these machines:

  1. DRE machines must have a voter-verifiable paper audit trails (sometimes called a voter-verified paper ballot). This is a paper ballot printed out by the voting machine, which the voter is allowed to look at and verify.

  2. Software used on DRE machines must be open to public scrutiny. This also has two functions. One, it allows any interested party to examine the software and find bugs, which can then be corrected. This public analysis improves security. And two, it increases public confidence in the voting process.

Mr. Schneier's article is very interesting and readable. I recommend reading the whole thing.

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Comments

I know the side photo changes often, and this has nothing to do with voting machines, but Abbye in the tub ala drowned rat is hilarious! Like she is saying "just you wait till I out and get a good shake!"

Posted by: Cowtown Pattie at November 10, 2004 09:09 PM

CP, that's one of our favorites also...that, and the one where she's wrapped in a towel and looking like a very somber Obi-Wan Kanobi (or, as we refer to her, Abbye-Wan Kanobi).

She hates those baths. Fortunately for her, she has a coat that sheds dirt amazingly well, so she doesn't need one very often.

[I much prefer to talk about dogs instead of electronic voting machines!]

Posted by: Eric at November 10, 2004 09:40 PM
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