Policy Mechanisms for Increasing Transparency in Electronic Voting

Policy Mechanisms for Increasing Transparency in Electronic Voting by Joseph Lorenzo Hall B.S. (Astrophysics, Northern Arizona University) 2000 M.A. (Astrophysics, University of California, Berkeley) 2003 M.I.M.S. (Information, University of California, Berkeley) 2005 A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Division of the University of California at Berkeley in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Management and Systems Committee in charge: Professor Pamela Samuelson, Chair Professor Coye Cheshire Professor Deirdre Mulligan Professor David Wagner Fall 2008 The dissertation of Joseph Lorenzo Hall is approved. Professor Pamela Samuelson (Chair) Date Professor Coye Cheshire Date Professor Deirdre Mulligan Date Professor David Wagner Date University of California, Berkeley Spring 2008 Policy Mechanisms for Increasing Transparency in Electronic Voting Copyright c 2008, Some Rights Reserved (See: Appendix F) Joseph Lorenzo Hall Abstract Policy Mechanisms for Increasing Transparency in Electronic Voting by Joseph Lorenzo Hall Doctor of Philosophy in Information Management and Systems University of California, Berkeley Professor Pamela Samuelson, Chair In the early years of the American republic, only white male landowners could vote, and then typically by expressing their preferences in a public setting, for all to witness. Our electoral system has changed drastically since that time; now almost all Americans cast votes with the assistance of computerized equipment. While much good stems from the use of computerized equipment in elections—notably increased efficiency, enfranchisement and flexibility—unintended consequences of this mechanization have left us with complicated, insecure and opaque voting systems. My PhD thesis focuses on the issue of transparency in e-voting; that is, what public policy mechanisms can serve to make our voting systems less opaque? After exploring what we mean by “electoral transparency”, I examine the question of e-voting transparency on three fronts. I analyze the role of disclosed and open source software in election systems and conclude that, while fully disclosed source code is a valid goal, limited disclosure to experts serves many of the same goals in the short-term while preserving vendor trade secrecy. I investigate how contractual provisions between local election jurisdictions and voting system vendors serve to frustrate transparency and find that election officials need to be more careful in these negotiations. Finally, I turn to the question of auditing black box elections systems; that is, since we cannot know how these systems work in the full-disclosure (“white box”) case, possibly because of contractual provisions that limit investigation, what methods and procedures can we use for “checking the math” behind our elections? Professor Pamela Samuelson 1 This dissertation is dedicated to those who have supported my work: Michelle, my family and each of my mentors. i ii Contents Preface . v Acknowledgments . vi 1 Introduction & Background 1 1.1 How Elections Have Changed . 1 1.2 A Brief Aside: How I Got Involved . 4 1.3 What is Governmental Transparency? . 6 1.4 How Might We Begin to Increase Transparency? . 8 2 Transparency and Access to Source Code in Electronic Voting 11 2.1 Introduction . 11 2.2 The “Enclosure of Transparency” of Voting Technology in the U.S. 14 2.3 The Implications of Source Code Availability for Transparency . 17 2.4 Enclosing Transparency Has Had Negative Effects . 19 2.5 Regulation and Legislation Relevant to Source Availability . 21 2.6 Benefits and Risks of Source Availability . 26 2.7 Open Source Voting Systems in the Voting Systems Market . 31 2.8 Barriers to Open Source Voting Systems . 35 2.9 Alternatives to Blanket Disclosure that Increase Transparency . 37 2.10 Conclusion . 40 3 Contractual Barriers to Transparency in Electronic Voting 43 3.1 Introduction . 43 3.2 Related Work . 45 3.3 Data and Methodology . 46 3.4 Analysis . 49 3.5 Recommendations . 60 3.6 Future Work . 62 4 Post-Election Audits: Restoring Trust and Transparency in Black-Box Voting Sys- tems 63 4.1 Introduction . 63 4.2 A Review of Current and Proposed Audit Models . 73 4.3 Audit Best Practices . 101 4.4 Directions for the Future . 114 5 Increasing the Effectiveness, Efficiency and Transparency of Post-Election Audits 121 5.1 Introduction . 121 5.2 Background and Motivation . 123 5.3 Methodology . 127 iii 5.4 Findings . 128 5.5 Conclusion . 140 6 Conclusion 141 Appendices 145 A October 28, 2003 Cease & Desist Letter 145 B Brennan Center/Samuelson Clinic Audit Panel 149 C Selection of Additional Precincts in Close Elections 151 D A Quick Primer on the Mathematics of Election Auditing 155 D.1 Introduction . 155 D.2 Sampling Without Replacement . 156 D.3 OK, But What About Elections? . 157 D.4 Calculating Probabilities Using Spreadsheet Software . 158 E Procedures for the 1% Manual Tally in California 161 E.1 Purpose of This Document . 161 E.2 Canvass . 162 E.3 One Percent Manual Count . 163 E.4 Manual Tally Procedures . 167 E.5 Certification . 177 F Creative Commons License 179 F.1 License . 179 F.2 Creative Commons Notice . 185 iv Preface When I began research into voting technology and election administration, I was surprised at the complexity of the subject. Something we rely on as the primary mechanism for directing our government is, unfortunately, still poorly understood and an active area of research. As someone who has always been interested in issues of secrecy, security, control and access to information, I was concerned that neither average voters nor seasoned experts could explain exactly how the machinery of our democracy functions. In this dissertation, I have attacked the opacity of voting system technology along three axes: access, oversight and accountability. Over the five years of work on my dissertation, I worked to make solid contributions towards increasing transparency through research that aims to make our elections system more tractable, understandable and accountable. v Acknowledgments The members of my qualifying and thesis committees are due a special thanks for their mentoring during the development of my thesis. My family and my partner, Michelle, were bastions of unwaivering support, the likes of which every young scholar should enjoy. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections (ACCURATE), Grant Number CNS-0524745. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The following sections acknowledge the work of individuals specific to each published chapter in this thesis. Acknowledgments for Chapter 2 A very special thanks to my legal supervisor and mentor, Deirdre K. Mulligan; without her advice and direction, this work would only have been a shadow of itself. Discussions with the following people were important in the development of this work: Pam Samuelson, Eddan Katz, David Molnar, Ka-Ping Yee, Pam Smith, Naveen Sastry, Dan Wallach, Michael Shamos and Mitch Kapor. Acknowledgments for Chapter 3 I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Aaron Burstein, Kim Alexander, Larry Norden, Ray Martinez, Deirdre Mulligan, Dan Wallach, Dan Sandler, Bev Harris, and the computing staff of the UC Berkeley School of Information, without which scanning and OCRing thou- sands of pages of contracts would have been unthinkable. Acknowledgments for Chapter 4 The Brennan Center and the Samuelson Clinic thank Alex Yacoub, a student at New York University School of Law, for his substantial legal analysis, as well as his extensive review and edits of this work. We also thank Policy Analyst Kahlil Williams and Research Associate vi Vijay Das of the Brennan Center, and Common Cause legal interns David Fialkov and Lindsay Frischer for their comments and research assistance. This work benefited greatly from the insightful and thorough editorial assistance of Deborah Goldberg, Director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. We are grateful to John McCarthy of the Verified Voting Foundation for his many helpful suggestions and ideas for improving this study. We thank David Jefferson, Chair of the Cali- fornia Post-Election Audit Standards Working Group and computer scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Applied Scientific Computing, and Robert Kib- rick, Legislative Analyst at the Verified Voting Foundation for their careful review of drafts of this work and substantive feedback. Pamela Smith, President of the Verified Voting Foun- dation was an indispensable resource with an extensive knowledge of state audit laws. We also thank Lee Mosher, Professor of Mathematics and Chair of the Department of Mathemat- ics and Computer Science at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey for his participation in conversations about post-election audits and this work. The participation of Aaron Burstein and Joseph Lorenzo Hall is made possible by the support of the National Science Foundation under A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections (ACCURATE), Grant Number CNS-0524745. Generous grants to the Brennan Center from an anonymous donor, the Carnegie Corpo- ration of New York, the Ford Foundation, the HKH Foundation, the JEHT Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Rockefeller Family Fund, and the Tides Foundation

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