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Name :   Paul Walmsley
Organization :   .
Post Date :   9/30/2005

Section Comments
Section :  6
Page no. :  
Line no.:  
Comment :  [Comment 3 of 4]

Overview of Live Auditing Procedures for Incorporation in the
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 _during_ 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.

The attached file contains the full text of this comment.  

This comment is also available at
http://www.booyaka.com/~paul/ea/eac-20050930/live-audit-overview.txt
Attach file :  live-audit-overview.txt