21-08-2012, 03:14 PM
Designing A New Electronic Voting System
[attachment=32304]
The Voting Paradigms
"I believe that voting is the first act of building a community as
well as building a country. "
John Ensign
In a republic, the electorate expresses its will through the election of
representatives. These representatives run the country, on behalf of the
body politic. In order that the representatives represent the wishes of the
people, the elections in which they are selected must be run fairly and
results computed accurately.
Electronic voting systems carry the promise of improving three aspects
of elections:
1. Speed. Hand-counting votes can be time-consuming, especially in
countries like the United States and Italy (Marco – is this right?) in
which voters cast votes for many races on a single ballot. The large
number of voters also adds to this complexity.
2. Intelligibility. When mechanical means such as pen and paper are
used, the resulting marks may be ambiguous or unintentionally void
the ballot. For example, in California, signing a ballot voids it. In
Florida, the different interpretations of when a "hanging chad" represented
an attempt to punch a hole, and when it was accidental, led
to controversy over the reported results of the election. Although the
Florida 2000 Presidential election is by far the best known example,
this has happened in other jurisdictions.
Background.
During the U.S. presidential election in November 2004, more than 40
million voters used about 175,000 electronic Voting Machines in order to
vote their new president [1]. Some of the most important election monitoring
groups as, VerifiedVoting.org and BlackBoxVoting.org, receiving more
of 175,000 calls to its Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) on different
problems types[2], are raising concerns about the Electronic Voting
safety [3,4] . According to data published on VerifiedVoting.org [5], few
years later some Security Teams (UC Red Team, Stanford University, Johns
Hopkins, ect.) [6, 7 ] tested the security of most common Voting Machines.
In the meantime despite industry tries claims that the problems reported
by VerifiedVting.org have any effect on the past presidential race; but the
security test result has been deleterious. The most popular Electronic Voting
machine: Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) built by Sequoia Pacific,
was vulnerable to at least 120 potential attacks[8] which an attacker could
compromise each eVoting Machine.
Voting Machines.
Voting machines are useful tools built to improve the election process.
They are combination of mechanical, electromechanical, electronic
and software components working together in order to define ballots, cast
and count votes, report eventually errors, report finals results and guarantee
the safety, the privacy and the security of each polling. Historic voting
machines are made by mechanical component and they print the results
on final paper. Actually the voting machine’s trend is following the electronic
way through networks and others communication ways: the electronic
voting machine. Every Voting machine includes practices and different
associated documentation used to identify each machine, each component
and each test that machine has ride out.
De-Facto Standard: VVSG.
Understanding how election system works means understand how the
de-facto standard has been written. The following section describes how
the system is working from a very high level view, referring to internal
NIST documents. Each diagram has been studied from NIST and written
in Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) to be self descriptive
and easy accessible for all the Voting Machines Companies, that emphasize
there is no a formal standard yet but only Voluntary Guidelines.
Glue.
Nowadays each digital component is composed and is part-of one or
more complex systems, this is the main reason why coordination seems to
be one of the most important problems to solve in computer Engineering
[20,21]. Glue Meta Architecture is one of the most primitive coordination
concept where each entity communicates through it using tuples by means
of standard Linda primitives [12,13,14]. Client-Server and Pear-to-Pear
are the most used communication paradigms on the world but they are
not alone. Glue Meta Architecture is based on associative Blackboard[19];
every entity can communicate with others entities writing a tuple on the
Blackboard enabling spatial and temporal uncoupling interaction. Client-
Server and Pear-to-Pear communication paradigms have a strong temporal
bond, in fact both entities must be connected at the same time and they
must be coordinate in order to respect the question-answer protocol. In the
Glue Meta Architecture this is not true. Entities are able to communicate
whenever they want and they could not respect the question-and-answer
protocol.
[attachment=32304]
The Voting Paradigms
"I believe that voting is the first act of building a community as
well as building a country. "
John Ensign
In a republic, the electorate expresses its will through the election of
representatives. These representatives run the country, on behalf of the
body politic. In order that the representatives represent the wishes of the
people, the elections in which they are selected must be run fairly and
results computed accurately.
Electronic voting systems carry the promise of improving three aspects
of elections:
1. Speed. Hand-counting votes can be time-consuming, especially in
countries like the United States and Italy (Marco – is this right?) in
which voters cast votes for many races on a single ballot. The large
number of voters also adds to this complexity.
2. Intelligibility. When mechanical means such as pen and paper are
used, the resulting marks may be ambiguous or unintentionally void
the ballot. For example, in California, signing a ballot voids it. In
Florida, the different interpretations of when a "hanging chad" represented
an attempt to punch a hole, and when it was accidental, led
to controversy over the reported results of the election. Although the
Florida 2000 Presidential election is by far the best known example,
this has happened in other jurisdictions.
Background.
During the U.S. presidential election in November 2004, more than 40
million voters used about 175,000 electronic Voting Machines in order to
vote their new president [1]. Some of the most important election monitoring
groups as, VerifiedVoting.org and BlackBoxVoting.org, receiving more
of 175,000 calls to its Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) on different
problems types[2], are raising concerns about the Electronic Voting
safety [3,4] . According to data published on VerifiedVoting.org [5], few
years later some Security Teams (UC Red Team, Stanford University, Johns
Hopkins, ect.) [6, 7 ] tested the security of most common Voting Machines.
In the meantime despite industry tries claims that the problems reported
by VerifiedVting.org have any effect on the past presidential race; but the
security test result has been deleterious. The most popular Electronic Voting
machine: Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) built by Sequoia Pacific,
was vulnerable to at least 120 potential attacks[8] which an attacker could
compromise each eVoting Machine.
Voting Machines.
Voting machines are useful tools built to improve the election process.
They are combination of mechanical, electromechanical, electronic
and software components working together in order to define ballots, cast
and count votes, report eventually errors, report finals results and guarantee
the safety, the privacy and the security of each polling. Historic voting
machines are made by mechanical component and they print the results
on final paper. Actually the voting machine’s trend is following the electronic
way through networks and others communication ways: the electronic
voting machine. Every Voting machine includes practices and different
associated documentation used to identify each machine, each component
and each test that machine has ride out.
De-Facto Standard: VVSG.
Understanding how election system works means understand how the
de-facto standard has been written. The following section describes how
the system is working from a very high level view, referring to internal
NIST documents. Each diagram has been studied from NIST and written
in Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) to be self descriptive
and easy accessible for all the Voting Machines Companies, that emphasize
there is no a formal standard yet but only Voluntary Guidelines.
Glue.
Nowadays each digital component is composed and is part-of one or
more complex systems, this is the main reason why coordination seems to
be one of the most important problems to solve in computer Engineering
[20,21]. Glue Meta Architecture is one of the most primitive coordination
concept where each entity communicates through it using tuples by means
of standard Linda primitives [12,13,14]. Client-Server and Pear-to-Pear
are the most used communication paradigms on the world but they are
not alone. Glue Meta Architecture is based on associative Blackboard[19];
every entity can communicate with others entities writing a tuple on the
Blackboard enabling spatial and temporal uncoupling interaction. Client-
Server and Pear-to-Pear communication paradigms have a strong temporal
bond, in fact both entities must be connected at the same time and they
must be coordinate in order to respect the question-answer protocol. In the
Glue Meta Architecture this is not true. Entities are able to communicate
whenever they want and they could not respect the question-and-answer
protocol.