VOTING SYSTEMS TASK FORCE (VSTF)
MINUTES
Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 4 p.m.
City Hall, Room 370
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, California
1. CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL
The meeting was called to order by Task Force Chair Jody Sanford at 4:27 p.m.
Present: Roger Donaldson Jody Sanford
James Soper Ka-Ping Yee
Beth Mazur
Tim Mayer
Absent: Gregory Miller
2. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES
By motion of Mr. Yee, seconded by Mr. Donaldson, the minutes of the August 18, 2010 meeting were approved as written.
3. PUBLIC COMMENT
Members of the public present during the meeting were:
• Eva Waskell – suggested several resources for the VSTF:
Voting Systems Audit Log Study by David Wagner, UC Berkeley, June 1, 2010. David Wagner was the Principal Investigator for SoS Bowen’s Top Bottom Review in 2007 - http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ccrov/pdf/2010/september/10284rm.pdf.
June 1, 2010 SOS Memo to the ROVs re: Audit Log Best Practices http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ccrov/pdf/2010/june/10181rm.pdf.
September 13, 2010 SOS Memo to the ROVs re: Revised Use Procedures to Include Audit Log Mitigations http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ccrov/pdf/2010/september/10284rm.pdf.
October 22, 2009 Wired article by Kim Zetter entitled “California Investigating Problems With Voting-Machine Audit Logs” http://www.debrabowen.com/news/clips?id=0009.
Voting Systems Failures: A Database Solution by Lawrence Norden, Brennen Center for Justice, September 13, 2010. This report mentions the Humboldt Transparency Project on pages 12-13. See also pages 39-42 What Local Governments Can Do Now, especially the paragraphs regarding “Negotiate Better Contracts.” http://brennan.3cdn.net/3f6d76f73fcfa76157_utm6baywl.pdf.
September 16, 2010 article in COMPUTERWORLD entitled “Study recommends reporting e-voting machine defects to national database” http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9186158/Study_recommends_reporting_e_voting_machine_defects_to_national_database.
• Mitch Trachtenburg – briefly summarized his work on the Humboldt Transparency Project in advance of his presentation to the SF Elections Commission at 6:30 pm on September 15 (http://humtp.com/).
• Brent Turner – expressed support for open source voting solutions and agreed to summarize his comment in email form for the benefit of VSTF members.
4. DISCUSSION OF DRAFT VSTF RECOMMENDATIONS DOCUMENT
VSTF members discussed a revised document structure/table of contents, the draft executive summary, the draft recommendations concerning auditing, and issues surrounding open source/disclosed source/proprietary software.
5. DISCUSSION OF VSTF NEXT STEPS AND TIMELINE
It was agreed that Ms. Sanford and Ms. Mazur would continue to refine the draft executive summary, that Ms. Mazur and Mr. Mayer would frame the issues of open source/disclosed source/proprietary software to facilitate team discussion at the October 6 meeting, and that Mr. Ping would revise the draft recommendations regarding auditing.
A next round draft will be posted to the VSTF website in late September.
It was proposed that the October 6 meeting have extended hours to allow additional time for discussion.
7. ITEMS FOR NEXT MEETING AGENDA
a. Continued discussion of VSTF draft recommendations and work plan
b. Reviewing inventory of documents on the VSTF website
8. ADJOURNMENT
The meeting was adjourned at 6:28 p.m.
