testing DREs - what a mess

[Neal McBurnett <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was perusing the parts of the BCV archive from before
I joined, and came across the thought-provoking tidbit below.

It raises the question - how would DREs be tested by the county?  In
the real-world example below (Riverside CA), the test didn't involve
touching the screen!!  That is clearly not a adequate test at all.  But
I can also imagine that it would be pretty tedious and error-prone to
actually get people to stand there and enter an adequate number of
test cases, without deviating from the script and thus spoiling the
test.

So this is another reason to avoid DREs and vote recording machines.
With a ballot marking machine, this sort of test is far less important
since the voter verifies the paper results on the spot.

Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
Signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  GPG/PGP Keyid: 2C9EBA60


http://coloradovoter.net/bcv-archive/msg00010.html
 From: Moon Lee

 http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/10/15/riverside_voting_machines/

 Riverside County, Calif., invited citizens to observe a test of its
 computerized voting systems. One participant was not impressed.

 Jeremiah Akin, a 28-year-old computer programmer who recently
 observed one of these tests in Riverside County, Calif., says that
 what he saw did nothing to mitigate his concerns about electronic
 voting -- indeed, the whole thing made him more worried than ever.

 >> Describe to me how the test was run. <<

 Well, I was picturing that people would go up and touch the touch screen and verify that what they had pressed was registered as a vote. But the way it's run is, they have a test cartridge that they pop into the back of the machine, and it runs a script -- it runs several hundred different voters, like some type of emulation.

 >> Sort of a simulation of what would happen during a day of voting. <<

 Yeah. But the touch screens themselves weren't actually pressed. Nobody got to touch those. So we didn't see what was on them, and we didn't see the input that was put into the machine. All that we saw was the output that came out later. And, I mean -- that's like telling somebody that your calculator can add 2 plus 2, then pressing some buttons behind a screen, and then showing them that it says 4.


[the rest of the article is also worth a read - see 
  http://coloradovoter.net/bcv-archive/msg00010.html]