Voting System Performance Rating (VSPR) project

[Neal McBurnett <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hmm - I'm surprised I haven't heard about this on any of the
voting-related lists I'm on.

There is a new organization, the Voting System Performance Rating
(VSPR) project, which is modeled like the IETF in that anyone
can join and participate.  It was pitched in a November article
to ACM members:

  http://www.vspr.org/cacm-vspr-article.pdf

Here is part of a more recent news.com story:

 http://news.com.com/Standards+aim+to+secure+e-voting+systems/2100-1028_3-5557926.html
 Voting machine vendors, election officials and prominent computer
 scientists said Monday that they've agreed to try to end ongoing
 controversy over electronic voting by attempting to draft uniform
 standards.

 The Voting System Performance Rating (VSPR) project is the brainchild
 of legendary cryptographer David Chaum, who invented digital cash and
 has recently been developing secure electronic voting systems.

 "It's like a Consumer Reports for voting systems," Chaum said
 Monday. When VSPR's work is complete, he added, a set of tests will
 be published that will let e-voting systems be evaluated in areas
 such as privacy, accessibility and accuracy.

 Chaum said he had to convince voting companies that VSPR was "the
 only way they could get the market to straighten itself out so they
 could make money. This was the only way they could stop the war
 between the voting officials and security advocates, which is
 complicated by the disability advocates."

 Among the founding members: Sequoia Voting Systems; Johns Hopkins
 researcher Avi Rubin; Warren Slocum, election director of
 California's San Mateo County; James McCarthy from the National
 Federation of the Blind; and MIT associate professor Ted Selker.

See also http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5572

and the groups own pages: http://www.vspr.org/

It seems off to a bit of a slow start, but given the participants, has
a lot of promise.

Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
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