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| | Name : | N/A | Organization : | N/A | Post Date : | 9/30/2005 |
| Comment : | Part one of three
Overview of Live Auditing Procedures for Incorporation in the=20
Voluntary Voting System Guidelines
The proposed Voluntary Voting System Guidelines are missing guidelines
for live auditing, and should include them.
"Live auditing" is the process of independent testing of voting system
functional units during an election, via methods that do not modify,
create, or destroy votes on live ballots. Live auditing is similar to
the 'parallel testing' process described in [1] and [2]; however,
modern auditable voting system designs enable live auditing to take
place without having to take voting machines out of service or to
otherwise affect the voting process.
Existing voting system test approaches are inadequate to verify voting
system reliability. Currently, election officials perform "logic and
accuracy tests" before, and in some cases after, the election.
However, even if these tests are successful, they disclose nothing
about the functionality of the system =5Fduring=5F the election. Logic
and accuracy tests also generally do not use live ballots, and are
often run in a 'test' mode on the voting systems. =20
Some examples of live audit applications:
1. Live auditing can be used to verify the accuracy of the 'ballot
scanning and interpretation' component of some optical scan systems and =
VVPAT scanners. With modern auditable voting systems, very high
accuracy tests can be implemented with a minimum of additional work.
One such technique is described in [4].
2. Live auditing can also be used to verify the accuracy of the vote
tabulation component, when it is decoupled from the rest of the
voting process (as it is in several current voting systems).
One such technique is described in [5].
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