EPIC Audits First Public Election to use Scantagrity Voting System
The following is from the EPIC News Alert 16.21
Secure voting systems should be simple by now, but it seems commercialmotivations and competition keep getting in the way. I'm hopeful
something better will be available soon. The Scantagrity voting system
looks promising. ----- The city of Takoma Park Maryland's Clerk of Elections sought EPIC's
assistance in conducting a manual audit of their November 3, 2009
election. The city chose the Scantagrity voting system for its biannual
election for mayor and city council. Scantagrity is an original concept
developed by David Chaum and has been refined for use in elections
through the collaboration of Ron Rivest, MIT and Poorvi Vora, Computing
Science Department at George Washington University. Scantagrity's implementation for the Takoma Park election allowed
voters the option of performing a post-voting verification of the
capture of their ballots for the tabulation phase of the election.
Takoma Park voters also had the option of second chance voting, which
allowed the selection of primary and secondary choice for the public
offices on Tuesday's ballot. This marked the first time in the U.S. that voters had the option to
check that their private votes are correctly recorded and included in
the election results. Selections on each ballot used unique codes for
each possible selection on the ballot. The codes correspond to the
ballot number. It is important to note, however, that ballots are not
associated with a specific voter. Poll book registration logging of
voters participating in the election was separate from the issuance of
ballots to voters. Voters were given ballots in a privacy sleeve. They then voted using
optical scan ballots behind privacy screens, which allowed voters the
option of noting the codes and ballot numbers on a form they could take
with them. Voters then deposited completed ballots into one of two
scanners. Later, voters could verify that their ballot was included in
the final results by going to the City Election Office's web site and
entering the ballot number. The process was not as accessible for
unassisted voting for persons vision related disabilities, when
compared with touch screen voting systems. However, the ability of
voters with a wide range of disability challenges were able to vote
independently, or with little assistance with their privacy sleeve
enclosed ballot's insertion in the scanner. EPIC was asked to randomly select ballots from the choice of ballots
provided to voters from each of the 6 wards. Over 1600 Takoma Park
voters participated in the election. The audit ballots were selected
at varying times throughout the Election Day, under the supervision of
election officials. Takoma Park elections officials voided each audit
ballot and marked ballots stubs to indicate that they were part of the
manual audit. Then EPIC processed each manual audit ballot by revealing
all possible selections for each ballot, then a copy of the original
manual audit ballot was made. The original ballots were placed in a
spoiled manual audit ballot envelope held by another election official
stationed in the polling location. Each ballot copy was then endorsed
by the Chief Election Judge, which will aid in authentication of the
copies when they are submitted to the City Clerk's office. The manual
audit ballots and their selections will be verified and the results
reported to the Takoma Park Clerk's office. Scantagrity:
http://www.scantegrity.org/ Links: Takoma Park Election's Office:
http://www.takomaparkmd.gov/clerk/election/2009/index.html Takoma Ballot verification Web page:
http://scantegrity.org/takoma/checkcodes EPIC's Voting Privacy Page:
http://epic.org/privacy/voting/
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