2) 2002 Help
Don’t Expect the Help
Part One: Problems with the
States and Federal Government
http://www.watchblog.com/thirdparty/archives/004077.html
Enacted in 2002 the Help America Vote Act or HAVA was meant to strengthen
the electoral process. Specifically after the irregularities which occurred
during the 2000 presidential election in
Now nearly four years since its enactment the success of HAVA is up in the air, with many of its components not fully enacted by the states, federal funding not fully forthcoming, serious security issues, and questions concerning provisional ballots.
The Help America Vote Act was enacted largely to put a system in place
which would protect against the type of confusion which occurred in
Part Two - ID Requirements Hurt the Soul of Expanding the Electorate
http://www.watchblog.com/thirdparty/archives/004091.html
Enacted in 2002 the Help America Vote Act or HAVA was meant to strengthen
the electoral process. Specifically, after the irregularities which occurred
during the 2000 presidential election in
Yet, states have used these ID requirements to institute requirements that would reduce rather than expand the electorate.
Part Three – HAVA is More Important than You
Think
http://www.watchblog.com/thirdparty/archives/004154.html
The state voter registration databases, spoken of previously, mandated by HAVA, could cause extra problems in HAVA’s implementation and success. Like many of the HAVA mandates Congress was rather vague and allowed a great deal of leeway to the states in the manner in which they set up these databases. One report has already noted that there have been “substantive differences in approaches around the country” (33). While differences in implementation do not necessarily mean a failure for HAVA it does open the door for increased problems.
Part Four – Problems with Electronic Voting
http://www.watchblog.com/thirdparty/archives/004222.html#more
Since the 2000 presidential election and the controversy regarding punch-card and lever based machines Digital Recording Electronic devices (DRE’s) have risen in use dramatically.
With the passage of HAVA and $325 million provided to states to replace punch card and lever based machines, many states (44) have further implemented the use of DRE’s. However the increased use of DRE’s due to HAVA funding could easily work against the goals set out in HAVA.
Probably the largest problem with DRE systems rests in the complete lack of knowledge of these systems. This lack of knowledge comes from the fact that the DRE vendors are privately contracted companies. As private entities the vendors of DRE’s do not allow any inspection of the software used, leaving government unable to test the software for potential problems (45). This inability to access the software also means that election officials have little chance to uncover fraud written into the machine, and must rely heavily on the vendors, giving the vendors rather than the government the majority of the power.
Part Five – More Problems with Electronic Voting Security
http://www.watchblog.com/thirdparty/archives/004234.html
Despite DREs being the new wave of technology there exists tremendous security issues with these systems that are not addressed in HAVA, and thus that could affect the successfulness of HAVA itself.
In “Analysis of an Electronic Voting System” the authors note that in Diebold’s AccuVote – TS DRE cryptography is rarely used, and when it is utilized is done poorly, further the author’s note that the system is written in C++ which is not type-safe (55). Due to this lack of cryptography in a mock election it was possible for voters to “modify smartcards to vote more than once (and) implement a ballot reordering attack which tricks voters into voting for the wrong candidate” (56).
The security problems involving DRE’s can be found in nearly every aspect of the voting process.