Federal vs. State

 Started the move towards eVote systems in the US  Old-fashioned manual punch card systems (Votomatic)  Often used in counties with low income, that had no money to buy new equipment  “hanging chads” – holes not fully punched through  Confusing paper ballot design   Uncertainty about voter intentions

 National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), in effect since 1994  No federal funding  Voting systems tested by “Independent Testing Authorities (ITA)” using 1990 Federal Election Commission Voting System Standards (VSS)  Slightly updated in 2002 (before HAVA passing)  NASED reviews ITA report and certifies a system as “meeting federal standards”  Conflict of Interest: ITAs are commercial companies; Vendors selects, and pays directly to the ITAs  ITAs have no interest in negative reports  Almost all systems used in US elections were NASED/ITA certified, yet the certification failed to prevent disasters like Florida 2000, or find the errors found in CA TTBR (see below)

 Passed in October 2002  Objective: ◦ Modernize US election technology to avoid situations like Florida 2000 in the future, through ◦ Creation of the Federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which would ◦ Establish uniform election system standards and create a new, more efficient federal certification system  And… 3.9 billion dollars in federal funding for states to buy new technology, guided by the EAC

 HAVA requires the EAC to develop new voting systems standards by January 1, 2004  These standards help states select technology to upgrade their election systems (using the federal funding) by January 1, 2006  BUT: Appointment of EAC commissioners delayed by almost 10 months  BUT: only US$ 2 million (of the US$ 30 million planned 2003 EAC budget for testing and R&D) was provided   No guidelines in 2003

 In 2004, of US$ 50 million budgeted for testing, research and development of standards, only US$ 1.2 million were paid out   No standards / certification in 2004  BUT: in 2004, US$ 1300 million was paid out to states to buy new technology  US Dept. of Justice insists on states having new equipment ready by January 1 st, 2006   Huge new, unregulated market for voting equipment makers

 Equipment makers rush to market  Immature products, focus on features, not code design  Insecure software  Counties buy whatever looks good  No in-house IT expertise to evaluate  No EAC guidance on what’s good and what not   Thousands of small and not-so-small disasters causes by faulty voting systems

 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) published only in December 13, 2005 (designed by NIST, approved by EAC)  Went into effect only in 2007  To bridge the gap, in June 2006, the EAC essentially took over the NASED/ITA program, with all its flaws  EAC’s own testing and certification program started only in January 2007

 Similar system as NASED (ITAs are now “voting system test laboratories” or VSTLs)  Testing against VVSG 2005  BUT: similar conflict of interest (direct VSTL payment and selection)  Still voluntary, states may require EAC certification, but don’t have to  Better: “Quality Monitoring Program” reviews systems after certification, and may de-certify for vendor misinformation, use of non-certified versions in the field, unauthorized change, malfunction and bugs in the field, etc  Updated VVSG II are still not finished, EAC tests against 2005 standards

 VVSG 2005 are fairly comprehensive, but EAC testing methods to verify them are not sufficient  EAC is “friendly” testing - defines test cases based on functions that the equipment is supposed to have  “Does it do what it says it does?”  Predictable, does not anticipate unusual situations or creative attacks  Adversarial testing: Assemble a group of smart people, and say “Lets see if we can break this!”  State certification programs like California TTBR, Ohio Everest, Florida SAIT

 Introduced in 2007 by Secretary of State (Sos) Debra Bowen in response to weak federal certification  All currently certified systems in use in CA are reviewed under new methodology  Severe security flaws found with all systems  SoS Office decertifies all systems for use in California (both Scanners and DREs)  Imposes strict usage conditions for re-certification ◦ for Sequoia and Diebold, only early voting, on eDay only one machine per polling place (for disabled access) ◦ all results from them must be manually recounted (100%) ◦ Hart Intercivic may be used more freely ◦ ES&S didn’t submit its software and was directly decertified  all vendors must produce plans to “harden” their equipment to protect against security vulnerabilities found by the TTBR

 States had been rushed by the Dept. of Justice to buy machines by 1. Jan 2006, even without EAC guidance  Now, in CA, millions of US$ worth of equipment (especially DREs) sat in storage, and could not be used  wasted taxpayer dollars  Counties had to revert to paper elections (e.g. Santa Clara Ct) or buy different, certified machines, spending extra money

 Penetration analysis / Red Team attacks ◦ first w/o system knowledge, then with full system knowledge  Source Code / Architectural review  Hardware review  Documentation review  Accessibility review   Threat assessment, define use conditions to mitigate the security weaknesses found

 Vendor pays SoS, not test lab  SoS then selects team who will audit   No conflict of interest  Audit teams are from State University (Professor and Grad students) – not commercial companies  Name and CV of each participating auditor is published online  academic reputation as guarantor of integrety  Teams elaborate report, SoS issues: ◦ certification, ◦ conditional certification (under use conditions), or ◦ rejection  Complete reports of teams are available online, not just summaries

 SoS must be informed for each system change  SoS decides: ◦ if the change is “minor” it “rolls over” the certification to the new version ◦ otherwise, full new certification is required  Temptation for vendor to not declare system changes to avoid cost of re-certification ◦ Case of ES&S – In Nov 2007, SoS sued ES&S for selling 972 AutoMARK Model A200 ballot-marking machines to several counties that contained hardware changes that had were not authorized by the Secretary of State ◦ Settled against fine of $3.25 Million in 2009

 Problem: need for system upgrades often arise with short notice  Not enough time to develop new software and pass through certification process in time for elections (takes months)  Because EAC certification is weak, states have their own systems, but this forces vendors to pay for all the different certification in all states they want to sell in  Prohibitively costly and time consuming  Market consolidation, only strongest vendors survive

 One strong federal certification system (modeled on State best practice) should make state certification superfluous  Cheaper for vendors, easier market entry

Thank you!