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Security and Election tools.

Doing some security reading, I came across a post from Bruce Schneier about voting and technology. It is part of a continuing thread in his blog and is quite timely. Securing Elections.

As a software engineer, I agree with Schneier and I think that working on secure, distributed, open and widely implemented voting registration system and tabulation systems would be interesting - both technically and socially. I have up-close experience (as a candidate in small city) with the tabulation process and I was surprised by the apparent lack of tools to expedite, verify, validate and secure the process.

 This piqued my curiosity further, to no particular end. Given that, I started searching the web for open voter registration and I found the Voting Technology Toolkit. An online sample of voter registration can be found at Trust the Vote demo project (Virginia). or even better at Rock the Vote.

Another system is Civitas, a NSF funded project from Cornell which is interesting for it's detailed description of it's theoretical underpinnings.

Doing a casual literature survey of "voter registration security issues" brings up a number of key issues like trust models, biometrics, voter coercion and fraud, permanent voter cards and a whole host of verification issues. Security of voting encompasses authentication, authorization and trust but also taking a systems view of the process. Getting only one component of the system secure, such as the voting machines themselves still leaves the whole system untrustworthy. Standards are supported by organizations like Verified Voting and they look at the whole picture, including administrative structures. It requires both defense in depth as well as laterally - being particularly careful at transition points.

Interestingly it's less than obvious who the makers of voting systems are. If you are interested, there are federal testing standards for voting systems from the Election Assistance Commision.

So, here are a few resources available if you are interested in electronic voting systems...
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