First time I have used the "Breaking" thing here, but I think it is warranted in this case.
According to Michael Hickins at internetnews.com:
A federal agency is set to recommend significant changes to specifications for electronic-voting machines next week, internetnews.com has learned.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.
DREs are currently used by more than 30 percent of jurisdictions across the U.S. and are the exclusive voting technology in Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland and South Carolina.
More below...
Update: Commenter nehark provides a link to a pdf of the draft report: http://vote.nist.gov/...
According to an NIST paper to be discussed at a meeting of election regulators at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on Dec. 4 and 5, DRE vote totals cannot be audited because the machines are not software independent.
In other words, there is no means of verifying vote tallies other than by relying on the software that tabulated the results to begin with.
The machines currently in use are "more vulnerable to undetected programming errors or malicious code," according to the paper.
The NIST paper also noted that, "potentially, a single programmer could 'rig' a major election."
It recommends "requiring SI [software independent] voting systems in VVSG 2007."
The NIST is also going to recommend changes to the design of machines equipped with paper rolls that provide audit trails.
Currently, the paper rolls produce records that are illegible or otherwise unusable, and NIST is recommending that "paper rolls should not be used in new voting systems."
Looks like people who actually know something are about to say what we have been shouting out for a while now. How soon until the authors get fired, or the report "delayed", I wonder?
Read the whole thing at internetnews.com