The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World

Citation

• Task Force on Voting System Security, “The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World”, Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law, New York, NY (June 2006).

Paper

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About This Report

From the Introduction:

In this report, the Task Force reviews several categories of threats to the technologies of three electronic voting systems. Direct Recording Electronic voting systems (“DREs”), DREs with a voter-verified auditable paper trail (“DREs w/VVPT”) and Precinct Count Optical Scan (“PCOS”) systems. We then identify, as against each system, the least difficult way for an attacker to change the outcome of a statewide election. And finally, we examine how much more difficult different sets of countermeasures would make these least difficult attacks. We believe that this analysis, together with the concurrent findings and recommended countermeasures, should assist jurisdictions decide which voting systems to certify or purchase, and how to protect those systems from security threats after they have been purchased.

Background

I was a member of the task force that wrote this report.

This is a local copy. The definitive version is available at http://www.brennancenter.org/dynamic/subpages/download_file_39288.pdf