ACCURATE Research at EVT/WOTE 2010
By Joseph Hall on 10 Aug 2010.
Results from ACCURATE research were presented recently at the EVT/WOTE 2010 Workshop, co-located with the 2010 USENIX Security Symposium.
Some highlights:
- The paper, “Efficient User-Guided Ballot Image Verification” (PDF) by Arel Cordero, Theron Ji, Alan Tsai, Keaton Mowery, and David Wagner won the best paper award. This research explored novel methods of processing images of ballots to allow simultaneous inspection (to detect stray marks) and verification of ballots. They are able to show an improvement in efficiency of an order of magnitude. Watch the video of their presentation here.
- Andrea Mascher, Paul Cotton, and Douglas Jones presented their work entitled, “Towards Publishable Event Logs That Reveal Touchscreen Faults” (PDF). While many academics complain that “we can’t look over voter’s shoulders in the voting booth”, Mascher et al. developed methods of performing usability/interaction studies on touchscreen interfaces while maintaining the secrecy of the voter’s ballot. Watch the video of their presentation here.
- Gillian Piner and Michael Byrne offered their work on usability assessment of low-fi (non-electronic) accessibility devices to help voters with disabilities vote privately and independently, in a paper “Baseline Usability Data for a Non-Electronic Approach to Accessible Voting” (PDF). You can watch the video from their presentation here.
- Finally, Joseph Lorenzo Hall moderated a panel on vulnerabilities with the Indian EVM voting machine that included P.V. Indiresan (Former Director, IIT-Madras), G.V.L Narasimha Rao (Citizens for Verifiability, Transparency, and Accountability in Elections, VeTA), Alok Shukla (Election Commission of India) and J. Alex Halderman (University of Michigan). The panel was quite lively and attracted a great deal of press attention from India and the U.S. Watch the video of the panel here.
EVT/WOTE is the premier venue for voting technology research and, frankly, a really fun time. ACCURATE is privileged to have founded EVT in 2006 and I think I speak for all of us when we say we’re impressed with the quality of scholarship presented each year at this venue.
