A Critique of the 2002 FEC VSPT E-Voting Standards∗

The goal of the standards is to “address what a voting system should reliably do, not how system components should be configured to meet these requirement” [5, Vol I §1.1]. The standards present a certification procedure involving testing by an Independent Testing Authority (ITA) and many jurisdictions cannot use systems that are uncertified. Virtually all vendors have this testing done. Nevertheless, there have been many instances of certified election systems being “broken” or performing unreliably. Thus the question arises: if systems that meet the standards can be induced to provide inaccurate or unreliable results in an election, is the problem that the standards are inadequate or is the problem that the testing is inadequate?