Open Architecture for Secure Electronic Voting.

Open Architecture for Secure Electronic Voting.

I have followed closely the passing of the HAVA, and some of the development
of the EAC and NIST's role in all these. I have also reviewed much of the
materials in public domain on Electronic Voting and I have come to the
following basic conclusions:

1. Election System is an Enterprise. The United States Election System
can be considered a Virtual Enterprise, crossing multiple jurisdictions, but
the goals of a public election (as against a private sector or other
systems) are the same.

2. Enterprises work best when it adopts a clear Architectural framework

3. Security of any Enterprise System can be conceptualized from an
architectural perspective

4. Development of a quantitative Security metric (or figure of merit,
to use my Advisor's preferred phrase) is imperative to a Holistic Security
Architectural framework, and thus to a Secure Election System (Electronic
and all that)

5. A Security metric for Electronic Voting System will enable consensus
on the actual state of an election system and help the community avoid some
of the pitfalls observed in the 2004 and 2002 elections when DREs where
used.