Intellectual Property Law

Voting Tech Experts Sought by Feds to Develop Standards

By Kim Zetter

Want to help improve the design and security of voting systems made by Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) and other companies?

The federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which oversees the federal testing and certification of voting systems, is seeking four technology experts to serve on the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), which will help craft the next version of voting system guidelines.

The guidelines serve as standards for voting equipment makers and are used by testing labs that certify voting machines to measure a system’s suitability for use in elections.

The current guidelines under which all voting machines have been tested and certified have been heavily criticized by computer security experts for their lack of security requirements.

The EAC is seeking applicants with a high level of expertise in programming, voting technology, and computer security and cryptography. They should also have solid knowledge about usability issues as well as accessibility requirements for disabled voters.

But you better hurry if you want to apply, since the EAC, which announced the openings (.pdf) on August 24, is closing the application period at 5pm eastern time September 8.

The four-year position is voluntary, though travel expenses are reimbursed. Members of the committee are required to submit annual financial disclosures to ensure they have no potential conflicts of interest.

The TGDC was established by Congress in 2002 to serve as an advisory board to the EAC to provide recommendations for the voting system guidelines.

The committee is chaired by the director of the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and is composed of 15 members, most of whom are election administrators or non-technical representatives of agencies with interest in voting machine issues, such as the National Federation of the Blind.

Four spots on the committee are reserved for individuals with technical and scientific expertise. Until recently, MIT computer scientist Ron Rivest, the “R” in RSA Security, was among those serving on the committee.

Despite the requirements that committee members submit financial statements to uncover conflicts of interest, at least some of the committee members have been appointed despite known conflicts of interest with voting machine makers.

Linda Lamone, for example, who is on the committee and is also elections administrator for Maryland’s State Board of Elections, was chastised by the governor of Maryland as well as her state ethics commission after it was revealed in 2007 that she appeared in sales literature for Diebold Election Systems praising the company’s equipment — equipment that experienced large-scale failure the first time the state used it.

Additionally, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) which calls itself “the voice of the nation’s blind” and has a representative on the committee, received $1 million in 2000 from Diebold Inc, the parent company of what is now known as Premier Election Solutions.

The NFB was at the forefront of convincing states to purchase paperless electronic voting machines that became the source of much controversy when computer experts discovered the machines were poorly programmed and lacked basic security protections, problems that were unnoticed or ignored by federal testing labs.

See also:

• Diebold and the Disabled
• Maryland Election Official Endorses Diebold Machines in Marketing Literature
• Report: Diebold Voting System Has ‘Delete’ Button for Erasing Audit Logs
• Diebold Admits Systemic Audit Log Failure; State Vows Inquiry
• Diebold Quietly Patches Security Flaw in Vote Counting Software
• EAC Accused of Altering Voter Fraud Report to Appease White House

Full post as published by Threat Level on September 02, 2009 (boomark / email).