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Topical Discussions
READ-ONLY SITE MATERIALS: Historical voting TWiki site (2015-2020) ARCHIVED from https://collaborate.nist.gov/voting/bin/view/Voting
The purpose of this TWiki page is to capture on-going topical discussions that can be used as a basis for exploring various Future VVSG considerations of current interest.
The information captured herein will, over time, be formalized across the groups as makes sense.
Commenters are encouraged to post:
- Their topical considerations; AND
- How they believe this can facilitate particular developments (requirements, principles, best practice guidance) for the Future VVSG.
Security vulnerabilities, need for Evidence-Based Elections, better voter registration protection
In late July of 2016, it became evident to a much broader segment of the public and the VVSG lists that the integrity of our elections is at risk. See e.g. By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines
by security guru Bruce Schneier
A discussion ensued on a variety of VVSG lists. Points emphasized included:
- We should require Evidence-Based Elections, rather than relying on certification alone, as elucidated by Stark and Wagner. This requires:
- Voter-Verifiable Paper ballots and pervasive, effective and transparent manual audits of the paper ballots (at least until other Software Independent voting methods are well-vetted and easy-to-use)
- Two-person chain-of-custody rules, tamper-evident seals, ballot accounting, and other procedural controls, along with compliance audits of these processes
- Casting votes over the Internet is insecure, as is currently allowed in a variety of states under a variety of circumstances
- We need better secure voter registration information, including sending postal mail to the previous address-of-record when voter registration information is changed, in case the change was unintentional or fraudulent.
Voting TWiki Archive (2015-2020): read-only, archived wiki site, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
ARCHIVE SITE DESCRIPTION AND DISCLAIMER
This page, and related pages, represent archived materials (pages, documents, links, and content) that were produced and/or provided by members of public working groups engaged in collaborative activities to support the development of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0. These TWiki activities began in 2015 and continued until early 2020. During that time period, this content was hosted on a Voting TWiki site. That TWiki site was decommissioned in 2020 due to technology migration needs. The TWiki activities that generated this content ceased to operate actively through the TWiki at the time the draft VVSG 2.0 was released, in February of 2020. The historical pages and documents produced there have been archived now in read-only, static form.
- The archived materials of this TWiki (including pages, documents, links, content) are provided for historical purposes only.
- They are not actively maintained.
- They are provided "as is" as a public service.
- They represent the "work in progress" efforts of a community of volunteer members of public working groups collaborating from late 2015 to February of 2020.
- These archived materials do not necessarily represent official or peer-reviewed NIST documents nor do they necessarily represent official views or statements of NIST.
- Unless otherwise stated these materials should be treated as historical, pre-decisional, artifacts of public working group activities only.
- NIST MAKES NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT AND DATA ACCURACY.
- NIST does not warrant or make any representations regarding the correctness, accuracy, reliability or usefulness of the archived materials.
ARCHIVED VOTING TWIKI SITE MATERIALS
This wiki was a collaborative website. NIST does not necessarily endorse the views expressed, or concur with the facts presented on these archived TWiki materials. Further, NIST does not endorse any commercial products that may be mentioned in these materials. Archived material on this TWiki site is made available to interested parties for informational and research purposes. Materials were contributed by Participants with the understanding that all contributed material would be publicly available. Contributions were made by Participants with the understanding that that no copyright or patent right shall be deemed to have been waived by such contribution or disclosure. Any data or information provided is for illustrative purposes only, and does not imply a validation of results by NIST. By selecting external links, users of these materials will be leaving NIST webspace. Links to other websites were provided because they may have information that would be of interest to readers of this TWiki. No inferences should be drawn on account of other sites being referenced, or not referenced, from this page or these materials. There may be other websites or references that are more appropriate for a particular reader's purpose.