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Originally Posted by Undertoad
Currently all electronic voting machines are HAVA-compliant, including those of Diebold/Premier Election Systems.
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Voting machines where I vote don't use PC. They use a superior system where the paper ballot is read by a scanner, asks about any anomalies, provides the option of making corrections, then stores both the electronic count and paper ballot in a secure box.
Therefore I have never seen a Diebold system. But if you have one, well some facts from UT's well appreciated discovery of the HAVA standards.
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2.2.9 Ballot Counter
For all voting systems, each device that tabulates ballots shall provide a counter that:
a. Can be set to zero before any ballots are submitted for tally;
b. Records the number of ballots cast during a particular test cycle or election;
c. Increases the count only by the input of a ballot;
d. Prevents or disables the resetting of the counter by any person other than authorized persons at authorized points; and
e. Is visible to designated election officials.
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Previously defined is the only counter that achieves these requirements with reliability. Any memory card, that involves writing rather than incrementing an internal counter, would violate those standards. However the lawyer can argue that the memory card cannot be changed without the PC. Therefore the memory card is secure. That is bogus; but acceptable where spin can replace honest technical facts.
Of course, that memory card (actually cards per next quote) must be located so as to be in constant view by poll officials.
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3.2.6.2.3 Memory Stability
Error-free retention may be achieved by the use of redundant memory elements, provided that the capability for conflict resolution or correction among elements is included.
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HAVA also demands redundant memory. Whereas a lawyer could claim redundancy by two memory chips on the same memory card, again, honest technical facts demand two separate memory cards. Therefore both must always be visually obvious to election officials.
Moving on:
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3.2.2.4 Electrical Supply
c. All systems shall also be capable of operating for a period of at least 2 hours on backup power, such that no voting data is lost or corrupted, nor normal operations interrupted. When backup power is exhausted the system shall retain the contents of all memories intact.
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That means no plug-in UPS such as from APC. If electricity goes out, voting must continue uninterrupted for two hours. That means a serious generator system. Club houses and churches (were voting is often conducted) do not have sufficiently reliable power that PCs would require. Therefore power hungry PC based voting systems require external power provided by a serious backup power system - something that would typically be as large as the entire voting booth. It's not just a simple PC. The electrical requirements make a PC based voting system significantly more expensive. Just another requirement that can be 'forgotten' since most would not know this.
Is your PC based voting station HAVA compliant? Two obvious requirements that any informed voter could quickly determine.
The most serious argument against PC based voting systems is the auditing function. Whereas the above defined voting system can audit in cases of hardware failure, a PC based system cannot. PC voting machines says that auditing is by printing the final results on a printer. It assumes voting occurs perfectly through the day. Any anomaly or exception - there is no record to identify a problem or confirm the vote count. If the voting machine works fine all day, then the only paper confirmation is a total printout at the end of the day. Hardly reliable. Considered sufficient by these HAVA standards and yet the most common criticism I have read from multiple sources.
The HAVA standard also says that any anomaly need only be recorded visually. IOW that Blue Screen of Death seen when defective hardware crashes Windows. Even that failure need not be recorded; only viewed on a video screen. Useful auditing of suspect security breaches would not be possible with acceptable PC based voting machines. Proper security demands all those 'problem' messages be recorded. As best I can tell, HAVA does not require it.
Little respect for any PC based voting system because - first and foremost - the memory card all but begs to be hacked - has no hardware security. Where I vote, the system can be completely audited from scratch due to its simplicity and alternative audit trail (called paper).