This document reviews literature related to electronic voting systems. It discusses security issues found in the source code of one paperless electronic voting machine used in U.S. elections. Several problems were identified, including unauthorized privilege escalation, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. The document also proposes an automated electronic voting system that uses fingerprint verification and a four-layered network to securely collect and count votes electronically. Finally, it analyzes write-in votes on optical scan ballots, finding that about 49% of voters do not fill in the write-in bubble, potentially resulting in lost votes not being counted.
This document reviews literature related to electronic voting systems. It discusses security issues found in the source code of one paperless electronic voting machine used in U.S. elections. Several problems were identified, including unauthorized privilege escalation, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. The document also proposes an automated electronic voting system that uses fingerprint verification and a four-layered network to securely collect and count votes electronically. Finally, it analyzes write-in votes on optical scan ballots, finding that about 49% of voters do not fill in the write-in bubble, potentially resulting in lost votes not being counted.
This document reviews literature related to electronic voting systems. It discusses security issues found in the source code of one paperless electronic voting machine used in U.S. elections. Several problems were identified, including unauthorized privilege escalation, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. The document also proposes an automated electronic voting system that uses fingerprint verification and a four-layered network to securely collect and count votes electronically. Finally, it analyzes write-in votes on optical scan ballots, finding that about 49% of voters do not fill in the write-in bubble, potentially resulting in lost votes not being counted.
This document reviews literature related to electronic voting systems. It discusses security issues found in the source code of one paperless electronic voting machine used in U.S. elections. Several problems were identified, including unauthorized privilege escalation, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. The document also proposes an automated electronic voting system that uses fingerprint verification and a four-layered network to securely collect and count votes electronically. Finally, it analyzes write-in votes on optical scan ballots, finding that about 49% of voters do not fill in the write-in bubble, potentially resulting in lost votes not being counted.
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Chapter II
Review of Related Literature
Analysis of an Electronic Voting System
With significant U.S. federal funds now available to
replace outdated punched and mechanical voting systems, municipalities and states throughout the U.S. are adopting paperless electronic voting systems from a number of different vendors. This system present a security analysis of the source code to one such machine used in a significant share of the market. This analysis shows that this voting system is far below event the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. Several problems including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes have been identified. This system shows that voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal software, furthermore, it has been showed that event the most serious of the outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable, showing that not only can an insider, such as a poll worker, modify the votes, but that insiders can also violate voter privacy and match votes with the voters who cast them. We conclude that this voting system is unsuitable for use in a general election. Any paperless electronic voting system might suffer similar flaws, despite any “certification” it could have otherwise received. It has been suggested that the best solutions are voting systems having a “voter verifiable audit trail,” where a computerized voting system might print a paper ballot that can be read and verified by the voter.1
Electronic Voting System
Using the decade old election system to collect votes
from the citizens is no longer considered efficient due to the various recurring errors. So time has arrived that the paper based primordial voting system which has already proven itself an inefficient and slow procedure is changed immediately. The system that is being followed currently, from data collection procedure to counting of the votes is a manual process. Here we are proposing an automated electronic voting system. It starts with automated registration system that will provide the secured database of the voters’ information. Voter details will be stored against their finger prints in the main database. The election commission authority is authorized to access the details but they aren’t authorized ro4 modifying or changing the details. Modification of the voters’ information requires the fingerprint of the particular voter. So the system will help to minimize the corruption done by others, and hopefully corruption may be diminished at some point of time. In this system Voter will select his/her preferable candidate by providing his or her opinion on a touch screen where all candidates’ voting sign is displayed. Four layered network system will be used here for sending the votes from client to the main database there are three application server, and a client.
1 Analysis of an Electronic Voting System
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~traynor/f08/slides/lecture16-evote.pdf Among them one application server will work as dispatcher through an application server and this layer will send those votes to main database through another application server. They will be counted there automatically which will take lesser time than the manual system. So the result will be faster, more accurate and reliable.2
An Analysis of Write-in Marks on Optical Scan Ballots
Optical scan ballot systems are widely used in
elections today. However, deployed optical scan systems may not always interpret write-in votes correctly. For instance, if a voter writers in a name but forgets to shade in the corresponding voting target, an optical scanner may not detect the write-in, which could lead to a lost vote. In this paper, we study methods for automatic recognition of write-in marks. We then apply these methods to ballots from an election in Leon County, Florida and study the kinds of write-in marks that are seen in practice. Our results from this election show that voters frequently (about 49% of the time) do not fill in the write-in bubble when entering a write-in vote. Consequently, votes may be lost in current voting systems.3