Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Lawsuit alleges evoting negligence in Florida

The EFF are amongst the complainants in a lawsuit alleging evoting negligence in Florida. I understand that David Jefferson and Dan Wallach are amongst the technical experts working on the case.

The lawsuit is calling for a re-run of the election in that area because nearly 20000 ballots didn't register a vote in the county's House of Representatives race. Even if independent experts do get to examine the machines involved, they may not be able to determine whether there was malicious code used, since as Ed Felten and others have ably demonstrated, such code can erase itself once the damage is done.

That the ACLU, the EFF and a number of other advocacy groups are putting scarce resources into this case might mean it has the kind of detailed facts making it a good test case to break through significant barriers with evoting, such as the vendors using secret software. It should be an interesting one to watch, as the current state of affairs with evoting in the US is unsustainable.

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