Background

THE PROBLEM

Fact: The fastest growing problem with U.S. elections today is digital voting. Americans found a way past the “hanging chad,” but confidence in the way we vote is now at risk from computerized voting systems that were supposed to be the way forward. Whether its touch screens or electronically counted paper ballots, increasing numbers of precincts are using computers to run elections, and we’re seeing more, not fewer problems.

Adopting digital voting machines is great for companies that make and sell them, but so far, it’s no better for voters. We’ve witnessed incidents ranging from wrongly recorded votes, to no way to recount, and even security lapses that can open the door to election fraud. But nearly all of these problems lie in basic technical aspects and procedures that can (and must) be successfully resolved first, before tackling any questions of optimal system design.

The most essential component of democracy is the freedom and right to vote and to have said vote reliably counted and verified in all public elections. Since the 2000 general election, digital voting devices and services have become a requirement in effort to avoid the historic and significant problems in conducting elections, including ambiguity as to ballot validity, reconciliation, and recount.

However, the current use of digital voting technology raises a number of concerns and questions related to the correctness in operation of related software, including, but not limited to: errors in capturing voter’s intent; assurance of software reliability and veracity; potential for vote tampering; and integrity of digital devices and services throughout the election process.

None of these concerns can be adequately addressed without determining a ways and means to assure transparent operational integrity, verification, fault tolerance, and high confidence in the utilization of digital voting devices and services.

 

THE SOLUTION

The time is now to start properly embracing technology in a manner that can alleviate the concerns and bring about high veracity digital voting. The challenges, issues, and questions are hard. We believe the way to their resolution can only be through a transparent, open, publicly vetted, and meritocratic process. The solution is to begin with the basis – establishing guidelines and specifications for what a high assurance digital voting device, system, or service must look like, how it is certified for accuracy, reliability, and usability. And these guidelines can be immediately applied to existing equipment and processes.

Next, a longer term solution for any digital voting service must build upon this foundation and establish a self-regulating standard with accountability loops; that is, an accepted methodology for certification, recognized and agreed-to by governing bodies such as the FEC, EAC, and state and local authorities. The results will be demonstrative, fully functional, and certifiable.

To achieve this, the OSDV is employing an open source approach to the architecture, engineering, and development of reference models for these processes, systems, and services. There are two primary schools of thought in approaching the design, development, enhancement and maintenance of complex systems: the so-called “Cathedral approach,” and the “Bazaar approach.” These approaches have been well vetted, and the Bazaar approach (or “open source”) is best described in Eric Raymond’s 1997 manifesto, “The Cathedral & the Bazaar.” While both of these approaches offer advantages, The OSDV believes the principles of open source that involve transparency, openness, and meritocracy are essential to addressing the challenges of digital voting reform. Importantly, the OSDV will not produce voting systems or services for commercial purposes.

 

 

WHO WILL BENEFIT?

Ultimately, the OSDV will produce two work products:

1. Assurance Testing Tools: A set of guidelines and specifications for how to assure veracity in digital voting technology – tools that polling station operators and precinct managers can use to provide clarity on their processes and procedures, and the adequacy of any technology sought or employed for those purposes.

2. Demonstration System: A model digital voting service that can serve as a demonstration, educational, and research tool, publicly available for review, comment, and suitable for “production purposes” should it be desired as a means for polling and voting in private or public elections.

The guidelines will be useful and benefit any election official or precinct manager. The specifications will serve as teaching tools. The demonstration system will be available for everyone.

We envision trade associations, organizations, non-profits, and educational institutions employing the demonstration system in parallel experimentation or actual application for their own polling or internal elections.

We see academic institutions and anyone in the education sector using the tools and demonstration system as a teaching tool and even for mock elections.

We hope public policy and political science schools will leverage the system for focus group studies, polling exercises, presentation layer studies, ballot design, etc.

And we imagine computer science and engineering schools extending, enhancing or even re-making the demonstration system or any aspect of it – even developing specialized hardware devices exclusively for voting kiosks.

The point is the end-result will be a fully functional digital voting service for the public benefit; suitable for production purposes, excellent for educational applications, and a gold-standard of how a high assurance digital voting system should function. An essential benefit for everyone will be strongly peer-reviewed, publicly vetted, open source processes that ensure a higher quality, transparent result void of the issues that arise from proprietary “black box” approaches.

 

 

AN ASSET OF THE PUBLIC TRUST

The OSDV will provide publicly available tangible results. We will deliver resources, tools, specifications, and reference systems that the public, including vendors, can freely choose to adopt, commercialize, and deploy for elections in the future without legal encumbrances. In other words, because our work will be completely “open source,” it will be free to adopt, extend and enhance.

Of course, any results intended for use in public elections will need to comply with the then published Federal, State, and local guidelines for certified e-voting systems. To this end, the OSDV hopes (in realization of its mission) that Federal and State election commissions will choose to adopt the OSDV open source guidelines and specifications.

Specifically, OSDV will seek to have its guidelines and specifications approved and incorporated into the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) best practices guidelines. However, as stated elsewhere, and repeated here for emphasis, OSDV will not serve as an advocacy or lobby for such adoption of any OSDV work by any government agency or regulator.

It is time for technology to be properly tamed and truly deliver the way forward for voting in the 21st century, where the realities of a digital society are taking permanent hold.

Many organizations are already hard at work on various aspects of this large and complex problem; the OSDV seeks to complement, and where appropriate leverage those public works. However, the highest priority for the OSDV is the ground work of guidelines and specifications for what any digital service or system for voting, and this is condition precedent to any other efforts the OSDV may exert on the taming of technology for “e-voting.”

 

 

INTERESTED?

We’re betting you are. In this background article, we’ve communicated our view of the problem and opportunity, the solution and our mission, and who will benefit.

We’re betting if you’ve read this far, you’ve nodded your head affirmatively at least once. Therefore, we think you’re the caliber of individual we can count on to lend your advice, and ideally, your involvement.

If you agree, please Join Us.