CONTENTS
[1] Newsletter Highlights
[2] Electronic Voting Under Extended Scrutiny
[3] A Deeper Look at E-voting Reform
[4] DHS Releases Proposed Rules for REAL ID Act
[5] New Congress Takes Up Competitiveness Legislation
[6] ACM Computing Contest Demonstrates Global Talent
[7] USACM Members Win ACM Awards
[8] About USACM
[An archive of all previous editions of Washington Update is available at
http://www.acm.org/usacm/update/]
[1] NEWSLETTER HIGHLIGHTS
Below are highlights of the top stories from March. It was a rather busy month for Congress as they worked on e-voting and competitiveness legislation, while the Administration released the draft rules implementing the Real ID Act. There is more detail on each
item below, as well as on our weblog at http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog:
* E-voting continues to be focus of attention in Washington D.C. as a key House committee held three hearings on Rep. Holt’s e-voting reform legislation alone. The Technical Guidelines Development Committee also met to discuss their progress on the next generation of voting standards.
* We started a series of posts taking a deeper look at one of the key e-voting reform proposals on Capitol Hill – The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007 (H.R. 811)
* The Department of Homeland Security finally released its proposed rules for implementing the REAL ID Act, which is a set of new standards and processes for driver’s licenses.
* Senate leadership introduces comprehensive competitiveness legislation while the House Science and Technology Committee reports its first competitiveness bills of the session.
* The 2007 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest demonstrated the talents of top collegiate tech talent from around the globe.
* USACM Members Eugene Spafford and David Wise win top awards from ACM.
[2] ELECTRONIC VOTING UNDER EXTENDED SCRUTINY
The many voting reform proposals that have been introduced in Congress are just one sign of the continued interest in voting reform expressed by policymakers. We anticipate this will continue for the foreseeable future as legislation moves through Congress, and the Election Assistance Commission and Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) develop the next generation of federal voting standards.
The House of Representative’s Committee on House Administration, which has jurisdiction over federal elections, recently held a series of hearings on electronic voting, in advance of the expected markup of H.R. 811, the The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007. (We have more detail below about this legislation.) The three hearings focused on, respectively, accessibility of electronic voting systems and source code review processes; auditing election standards and processes; and a more specific review of H.R. 811. Berkeley Professor (and USACM member) David Wagner testified during the first hearing about why source code review was important and the need for public disclosure of electronic voting system’s source code. Princeton Professor (and USACM-EC member) Ed Felten testified during the third hearing about how H.R. 811’s approach of combining the transparency of paper ballots with the use of computing devices is the right approach for e-voting reform. Unfortunately, the testimony for the hearings is not currently available on the committee’s website. You can see Prof. Felten’s testimony at:
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1140
and Prof. Wagner’s testimony at:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/testimony-house07.pdf
Moving to executive branch action, the TGDC met in March to discuss the progress by the three TGDC subcommittees (Security and Transparency, Core Requirements and Testing, and Human Factors and Privacy) in developing details for the next generation of federal voting standards and to adopt a few resolutions. One significant resolution directed the subcommittees to determine standards for paper trails, and another recommended that any voter unable to read the voter-verified paper trail would need to submit that record to an audio system that would read the paper, record it and read it back to the voter. Such a system would have to be accessible to those with dexterity problems.
You can access meeting documents and a webcast online at:
http://vote.nist.gov/meeting20070322.htm
The current draft of the next guidelines (currently about 80% complete, and over 500 pages long) is also available online at:
http://vote.nist.gov/meeting-03222007/VVSG-SETdraft-20070306v5.pdf
This meeting was not nearly as dramatic (for a technical meeting) as the December 2006 meeting, which saw a key fight over adopting “software independence” as a standard for all e-voting systems. Under this proposal, the next generation of voting systems would have to allow a voter to verify the his or her intent independent of the underlying software. USACM wrote a letter in support of the software independence recommendation, and the TDGC ultimately adopted the position.
The TGDC will meet again on May 21st and 22nd, and is expected to provide its draft guidelines to the Election Assistance Commission by the end of July. This will be followed by a public comment period, review by the EAC and its boards, and a set period of preparation time after final approval. That prep time was set at two years when the last set of guidelines was approved in December 2005. However, the EAC did allow for testing to those standards to start in January of this year, 11 months ahead of schedule. Conventional wisdom is that these standards would go into effect in 2010.
[3] A DEEPER LOOK AT E-VOTING REFORM
For the past few Congresses Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) has taken the lead on legislation to reform electronic voting. Each year his efforts have garnered deep support from the Democratic party, but each year the legislation stalled with no Congressional action. With the Democrats now controlling Congress, Representative Holt reintroduced his legislation – the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007 (H.R 811) - with high hopes that he will be able to shepherd it into law. One thing is clear, if you are interested an e-voting issues, this legislation is the bill to watch.
When you first read through Representative Holt’s bill two things strike you. First, it is dense with substantial detail about how he seeks to reform not only voting machines, but the entire voting system. Second, it covers a wide scope of issues dealing with election policy. For the sake of clarity, we’ve broken his proposal into five parts: reforming voting machines, reforming testing labs, funding, enforcement, and manual audits by election boards. Over a series of three posts on the USACM weblog (that are too long for this newsletter) we are exploring the provisions of the legislation dealing with the machines, testing labs, and audits; and then we’ll be speculating about the prospects for this legislation.
You can review the post about reforming machines and security practices here:
http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=478
You can review the post about testing labs and audits here:
http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=484
We will soon post the third in the series on the weblog, which will speculate on the prospects for this legislation.
[4] DHS RELEASES PROPOSED RULES FOR REAL ID ACT
On March 1, the Department of Homeland Security released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the REAL ID Act. The NPRM is essentially the rough draft of the regulations that would help implement the act - specifically the portion of REAL ID focused on driver’s license requirements. The proposed REAL ID rules are available in the Federal Register, and subject to a 60 day comment period. The release about the notice is here:
http://www.dhs.gov/xprevprot/laws/gc_1172765386179.shtm
The actual notice (162 pages) can be found here:
http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/nprm_realid.pdf
The proposed rules come out only 14 months before a May 11, 2008 deadline for states to comply with the identification card requirements. While states can take until May 2013 to phase in the cards, they must be ready to issue new cards by the May 11, 2008 date (or request an 18 month extension by October of this year). Given the challenges states faced in changing voting systems following the implementation of the Help America Vote Act, it seems likely states will be hard pressed to meet these deadlines.
This rulemaking notice follows a recent resolution by the Maine legislature that they would refuse to comply with the REAL ID Act, an action several other states are considering as well. Legislation may also be introduced in Congress to repeal the drivers license portions of the act (as it was in the previous Congress).
Among other things, the REAL ID Act imposes new requirements on drivers licenses and drivers license databases. The new licenses would be the only acceptable documents for most people to enter federal buildings and fly on airplanes. The interconnected databases, along with the new licenses, raise concerns about privacy and security. USACM expressed its concerns with the legislation in a 2005 letter to Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), which you can find on our weblog at:
http://www.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=240
From the letter:
“We wish to express our concern that the legislation would significantly increase the risk of identity theft while decreasing personal privacy. We also join those, such as yourself, who anticipate that this Act will create a de facto national identification system with several critical shortcomings.”
The 60-day comment period will expire on May 8. USACM will submit comments on the proposed rules, focusing on the technical aspects of the regulations.
[5] NEW CONGRESS TAKES UP COMPETITIVENESS LEGISLATION
If Congressional intentions materialize as Members hope, expect competitiveness legislation to come to the floor of both houses soon after the April Recess.
In early March, the Senate introduced the COMPETES Act (S761), which is very similar to legislation introduced late last year during the previous Congress. The bill has two main functions: increase the budget authorizations for the Department of Energy Office of Science, The National Science Foundation, and other science agencies; and establish or expand Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programs - both teacher training programs and support for students. A major difference between this bill and last year’s effort is the timing. Early in the year and with the political support of both the Majority and Minority Leaders, this bill stands a better chance of moving forward.
The House Science and Technology Committee has already reported favorably on both of its competitiveness bills in markups held in late February and late March. The first bill reported, H.R. 363, addresses support for young researchers (its budget authorization provisions were removed and will be dealt with in other legislation), while the second, H.R. 362, reauthorizes and expands teacher training and scholarships for students in STEM disciplines. This bill was amended with additional emphasis on minority serving institutions and institutions and students from low-income areas, as well as support for increasing laboratory experience in high schools. Chairman Gordon expects the legislation to see floor action following the recess.
[6] ACM COMPUTING CONTEST DEMONSTRATES GLOBAL TALENT
Now in its 31st year, the Association for Computing Machinery’s international competition in computer programming showed the continuing growth of global computing talent this year. The top five winners were Warsaw University (Poland), Tsinghua University (China), St. Petersburg University of IT, Mechanics and Optics (Russia), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (U.S.), and Novosibirsk State University (Russia). The final round of competition included 88 teams; and earlier rounds featured more than 6,000 teams representing 1,765 universities from 82 countries.
The only U.S. university to finish in the top 10 was MIT, which placed 4th. Other top finishers from the U.S. were California Institute of Technology at number 12, and the University of Texas at Dallas, which was tied for 14th place with 12 other schools. Full results are available at:
ACM President Stuart Feldman pointed to the superior problem-solving abilities demonstrated throughout the competition from teams across the globe. “The competition at the ACM ICPC World Finals is incredible. The contestants must attack a wide variety of problems, and the top 15 teams are all performing at a level that exceeds what it took to win the contest only 10 years ago,” he said.
“This contest is a concrete indicator of talent and future possibility. Students like these are tomorrow’s top prospects in the information technology and computing fields,” said Feldman, who is also vice president, Computer Science Research, at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center. “With the growing worldwide demand for technology skills, companies large and small - including IBM - will be tapping today’s winners as future employees.”
Congratulations to all the competitors.
[7] USACM MEMBERS WIN ACM AWARDS
ACM’s policy office congratulates two USACM members that have been recognized by ACM awards this year.
Eugene Spafford, Chair of USACM, has been recognized with the President’s Award. The award recognizes individuals who have “demonstrated their exceptional abilities to advance computing technology and enhance its impact for the benefit of society through generosity, creativity and dedication to their respective missions.” Past recipients of the President’s Award include Edward Lazowska and Robert Kahn. Dr. Spafford is a Professor at Purdue University, with appointments in both Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering.
USACM member David Wise has received the 2006 Award for Outstanding Contribution to ACM. Wise chaired the ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) and has held the ACM positions of vice president and secretary-treasurer. He led the creation of the Federated Computing Research Conference to facilitate communication among researchers in different computer science and engineering fields. Wise helped advance the usability and content of ACM’s world-renowned Digital Library by creating its subscription and copyright policy, and advocating for early inclusion of newsletters and conference proceedings from ACM’s Special Interest Groups. An ACM Fellow since 2004, he is currently a member of ACM Council as well as several other executive committees. Dr. Wise is a Professor of Computer Science at Indiana University.
[8] ABOUT USACM
USACM is the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM is an educational and scientific society uniting the world’s computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.
For more information about USACM and ACM, see:
http://www.acm.org/usacm/about.html
BACK ISSUES
For earlier editions of the ACM Washington Update, see
http://www.acm.org/usacm/update/
SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
To subscribe to ACM’s Washington Update newsletter, send an e-mail to
listserv@acm.org with “subscribe WASHINGTON-UPDATE “First Name” “Last Name”
(no quotes) in the body of the message.
To unsubscribe, simply include the “SIGNOFF WASHINGTON-UPDATE” command in an
email to listserv@acm.org.
Trackbacks
The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://usacm.acm.org/usacm/weblog/wp-trackback.php/485
None at this time.