The mission of the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition is to restore public ownership and oversight of elections, and to ensure the fundamental right of every American citizen to vote and to have each vote counted as intended in a secure, transparent, impartial, and independently verified election process.
Overview of ES&S Election Management Software
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 02/11/2007 - 9:41pm
The attached PDF is an overview of the ES&S Unity Election Management Software. The source is ES&S itself: it was submitted to the state of NY as part of the company's proposal to provide equipment for that state to replace the lever machines. It was posted on the NYVV website.
What is important to note is the fact that the software is more intertwined than previously thought and several modules interact in ways that are not completely clear from this schematic.
One major function that could bear greater scrutiny is creation of the ballot definition files. If these BDF's were examined rigorously as part of an election verification process, there is a distinct possibility that errors might be detected that would otherwise not be discovered. All of the specifics of each election are entered into the system at this point and from there this information is used to program the chips or memory cards which are inserted into the optical scan machines. It is also used by the tabulation and reporting modules. Because of this interaction between modules it is impossible for any verification protocol to segregate the tallying on the optical scan machines from the work of the vote tabulation module. This is an information management system and needs to be treated with a systems approach in the pursuit of a robust verification protocol.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| ES&S Unity Overview.pdf | 154.39 KB |
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