Voting Technology

News Release.  LWVSC Position on Voting Machines.  Background and Action on Voting Technology Issues.

News Release 1/21/08

League of Women Voters Calls on State Elections Commission to Address Voting System Problems -- press release

LWVSC Position on Voting Machines

The LWVSC supports protecting the integrity of the electoral process in the way elections are conducted by:

• Purchasing only voting machines that include a paper audit trail. Acceptable machines must ensure protection of privacy, allow the voter to verify his/her vote, and provide a reliable basis for a recount if required.
• Mandatory random testing of voting machines during every election.
• Requiring that source code of voting machines be open for inspection.

(LWVSC Agenda for Action, 2007-2009, p. 19)

History: This position was added in 2007 after completion of a two-year study of electronic voting in SC.

Background and Action on Voting Technology Issues

The white paper, Unsafe for Any Ballot Count: A Computer Scientist's Look at the ES&S iVotronic in Light of Reports from Ohio, California, and Florida, was prepared for LWVSC following the publication in December 2007 of the report by the Secretary of State of Ohio.

LWVSC has published a Letter to the Editor, Vote in the Presidential Primaries, in major newspapers in South Carolina.

The report from Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner can be found here.

The report to the Florida Secretary of State can be found here.

The report from California Secretary of State Debra Bowen can be found here. (Note that the California report does not address the iVotronic voting machine used in South Carolina, but that many of the issues raised in Ohio and in Florida are issues raised in California about other voting machines.)

The draft report written for the National Institute of Standards and Technology regarding "software independence" in voting machines. (Warning: this is a technical paper.)

Another draft report to NIST on software independence. (Warning: this is also a technical paper.)

Comments, suggestions, questions? Contact our webmaster. Last revised: February 29, 2008 13:40 PST.

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