AVI RUBIN: 'After Four Years of Study, I Now Believe that a DRE (touch-screen) with a VVPAT (paper-trail) is Not a
Reasonable Voting System'
Johns Hopkins Professor, E-Voting Security Expert Goes on Record Against Electronic Ballots at Congressional Hearings
on Election Integrity...
By Brad Friedman ON 3/9/2007 9:35AM
E-Voting expert, Johns Hopkins computer science and security professor, Avi Rubin, once again stated for the record,
this time in his testimony before a House subcommittee hearing on "Ensuring the Integrity of Elections", that Direct
Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems --- with or without a paper trail --- are "not
reasonable" for use in a democracy.
Period.
From his blog item Wednesday discussing his testimony (which also includes a link to his complete formal statement):
Finally, I was asked if I thought that a DRE with a paper trail was an adequate voting system. I replied that when I
first studied the Diebold DRE in 2003, I felt that a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) provided enough assurance.
But, I continued, after four years of studying the issue, I now believe that a DRE with a VVPAT is not a reasonable voting system. The only system that I know of that achieves software independence as defined by NIST, is economically viable and
readily available is paper ballots with ballot marking machines for accessibility and precinct optical scanners for
counting - coupled with random audits. That is how we should be conducting elections in the US, in my opinion.
So between Rubin's beliefs, and those of most every other computer scientist I've heard from, why do we (meaning Congress and their public-advocacy group supporters such as PFAW, Common Cause, MoveOn,
VoteTrustUSA and others) continue to play this DRE game???
It's madness...
ENDS