comments on NIST "Draft Report on Voting System Vulnerability"

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ed Gerck <egerck () safevote com>
Date: December 3, 2006 7:51:35 PM EST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>, Ip Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: comments on NIST "Draft Report on Voting System Vulnerability"

[Dave: Greetings. For IP if you think it's of interest]

The NIST emphasis on a paper trail is unjustified, even so
because the need for independent auditing cannot ab initio
favor one recording media over another.

On  Aug 28, 2001, I discussed the first public presentation
of a practical, independent auditing solution regarding the
subject matter of the NIST draft, in the WOTE '01 seminar
organized by Caltech/MIT,  available at:
http://www.vote.caltech.edu/wote01/pdfs/gerck-witness.pdf

The solution does not rely on paper, as a 'favored'
media, but on allowing multiple channels of observation,
as independent as possible, called "witnesses". It is proven,
under general Information Theory considerations, that full
channel independence is not required for the system to work.

In particular, now that governmental and private secure record
keeping is finding that paper is the least favored recording
medium specially in regard to cost, storage, availability (in
the technical IT sense), security and survivability, it seems
anachronic to have a NIST report suggesting paper records as
the "silver bullet" against election fraud in DREs.

The NIST draft should, thus, favor a technologically-neutral
solution to independent auditing of DREs, which is necessary,
rather than postulate one particular media (paper) over others.
There are better media than paper.

Best,
Ed Gerck, Ph.D.



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