Submission to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Conduct of the 2010 Victorian State Election

CORE is an association of university departments of computer science in Australia and New Zealand. The author, Dr Vanessa Teague, is an honorary fellow in the department of computer science and software engineering at the University of Melbourne, with a research emphasis on secure electronic voting. This report has been endorsed by the president of CORE. I was appointed by the VEC as a " Technical Observer " for the 2010 election. I was given a protocol‐level description of the system, and allowed to observe many parts of the electronic voting process, including an audit of the kiosks and the decryption of the votes on election night. Apart from this cover page, this submission is identical to the report I submitted to the Victorian Electoral Commission, which they published on their website: The main recommendations of this submission are: • Any electronic voting system should provide at least the same security, privacy and transparency as the system it replaces. • If electronic voting is extended to voters who can read their own printout, then it should provide a printout for them to verify (a voter‐verifiable paper trail), or some other form of direct verification. • The auditor's report should be public, and the source code should be available to a much wider group of experts for analysis. • There should be an Australia‐wide set of standards for electronic voting systems, and it should include points (1) and (2). • Requirements for openness should be part of the initial tender and contract. The more openness, the more assurance that the system behaves as expected. • The system should be redesigned so that no single component can compromise the integrity or privacy of the votes. I would be very happy to discuss electronic voting further with the committee or the VEC. It is easiest to reach me by email at [email protected]. My phone number is 8344 1274.