By May 5 please support auditable, software independent voting systems for EAC voting guidelines

[Neal McBurnett <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Please do take some time to, even briefly, comment to the EAC about
the importance of having auditable voting systems (e.g. the ability to
report the results of central-counts of absentee ballots by batch so
they can be audited without sorting the whole election by precinct.)

And as noted more fully below, the importance of software independence.

Thanks!

Neal McBurnett                 http://mcburnett.org/neal/

----- Forwarded message from Verified Voting <alerts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> -----

We need your help in the next several days to ensure that future voting systems
are reliable, accessible, and verifiable. The federal Election Assistance
Commission is taking public comments on proposed guidelines for voting
technology.  The federal guidelines are voluntary, but many states require
compliance, and vendors must meet these standards to remain competitive.  We
need you to express your support for a crucial requirement that is under
threat: software independence.

Software Independence (SI) is an important advance toward verifiable voting: it
means that voting systems should not rely only on software, because software
can contain errors or problems that are impossible to detect without an
independent record of voter intent. Of present technologies, only systems that
utilize voter-verifiable paper records or voter-marked paper ballots would be
software-independent. However, software independence may not make it into the
final guidelines; those who still support paperless electronic voting are
opposing SI. Your comments are needed to ensure that software independence
remains part of the federal guidelines for voting systems.

Monday May 5 is the last day for the current phase of public comment. It will
be harder to effect change in the voting system guidelines after May 5, so it
is important that citizens comment now.

For a list of other key voting system guidelines provisions that need
strengthening (e.g., a standard data reporting format for auditing of
elections), suggested comments, and directions for using the EAC website to
make comments, please go to this webpage:

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5861

If you have time only to comment on software independence, go to this webpage:

http://www.eac.gov/vvsg/part1/chapter02.php/

There, scroll down to section 2.7A - "Software Independence" and click the
"comment" link at the bottom of the section. Below is an example comment.
Please keep in mind that your own words are most effective.

Example Comment: "All computer systems are subject to subtle errors. Moreover,
computer systems can malfunction or be deliberateley corrupted at any stage of
their design, manufacture, and use. The methods used to do this can be
extremely difficult to foresee and detect. Therefore, it is crucial to the
integrity of elections that voting systems provide a means of recording and
recovering voter intent that does not depend on the reliability of software."

Remember, Monday May 5 is the deadline.

Thank you for taking your time to comment on this important issue, and thank
you for all you do.

The Team at Verified Voting

----- End forwarded message -----