Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2007 - (Page 48)

Dan Lopresti, associate professor of computer science and engineering, holds the Class of 1961 Chair and is co-director of the Pattern Recognition Research Lab. He has authored more than 80 publications in journals and refereed conference proceedings on a wide range of topics and holds 21 U.S. patents. the last word ACT NOW TO ENSURE SAFE AND SECURE ELECTIONS Pivotal events sear their images in our collective consciousness. Few Americans will forget scenes from the immediate aftermath of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election: confusion and consternation over initiated and aborted recounts, with ofﬁcials in Florida grouped around crowded tables attempting to interpret a voter’s intent in the face of “dimpled” and “hanging” chads. Recognizing a critical need to modernize the way we conduct our elections, Congress invested billions of dollars in the most sweeping overhaul in history, the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA. Unfortunately, while its goals are laudable, HAVA’s implementation to date has been fundamentally ﬂawed. We may soon be confronted by a different set of unforgettable images, this time involving electronic voting machines that purport to inform us who won and lost, but that we cannot completely trust because computer memories and programming are inﬁnitely malleable. Indeed, as another presidential election draws close, it is quite likely we are worse-off than we were pre-HAVA. While the American public has a general awareness of the dangers posed by computer viruses, identity theft, “phishing” schemes, and the like, experts who study computer security understand a fuller range of issues that confront us. Left out of the debate when HAVA was first put in place, these professionals stepped forward when it became apparent that computer technology was being improperly applied. Driven by a belief in social responsibility and working with little or no outside assistance, they have identiﬁed a lengthy list of serious problems in commercial systems already used in elections. Poor software engineering practices, supposedly secure passwords widely publicized on the Internet, ﬂimsy locks that can be picked in a few short seconds (or opened with ubiquitous minibar keys), and machines that are reprogrammable with only a minute or two of access are just a few examples of the problems that have been uncovered. At the state and local government level, weak certiﬁcation criteria and discredited testing authorities have only exacerbated the situation. These revelations have begun to take a toll, most recently causing the State of California to decertify many of its electronic voting systems after conducting the ﬁrst comprehensive and truly independent top-to-bottom study of such equipment. With the 2008 election only a year away, the time to act is now. It may seem anachronistic, but many scientiﬁc experts believe that provisions for the inclusion of a physical record, in the form of hand- or machine-marked paper ballots, are central to guaranteeing safe and secure elections. Paper ballots provide veriﬁable evidence of a voter’s intent that is readable by machines as well as by human auditors. The processing of such records is not without its own set of challenges; unlike the situation with purely electronic systems, these can be addressed through careful system design and procedural safeguards. At Lehigh, we have joined a few other universities around the country to develop better voting technologies. Our research, funded by the National Science Foundation, examines the inclusion of paper as an integral component in trustworthy voting systems. We are working to characterize the errors that arise in the computer processing of paper ballots, to examine approaches for unbiased election auditing, and to investigate techniques for facilitating extremely accurate manual recounts. Our team will also be conducting surveys and focus group studies to measure voter confidence and to identify common misconceptions that may discourage people from voting. The impact of this problem extends beyond our research program; first-year engineering students at Lehigh have studied the technical, political, social, and legal issues as part of their Engineering 005 course, and several seniors in Computer Science and Engineering are doing independent studies examining speciﬁc aspects of the e-voting question. We are indeed at a pivotal point in our nation’s history. The decisions we make now will determine whether upcoming elections run smoothly or raise suspicion and incite divisiveness. Our voting machines must be above reproach because so much else depends on them. —Dan Lopresti PHOTO BY DOUGLAS BENEDICT ©2007 Lehigh University. Produced by University Relations (#7001:1107)

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Alumni Bulletin - Fall 2007

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