802.11 at the Polls

Advanced Voting Solutions (AVS) of Frisco, Texas, near Dallas, does not fear the hanging chad.

The company has long been making voting systems, and over the last two years went wireless. It introduced its WIN system -- short for Wireless Information Network -- around which AVS has built its voter polling products.

The system consists mainly of the WINvote voter-activated 15-inch LCD touch-screen that comes with a Wi-Fi connection. This is the unit set up at precincts for interaction with voters -- identified by a smart card handled by the polling station employees. During the day it stores and collects all the ballot data, then at the end of the Election Day, that data is transferred to a central unit (the WINmanager, which could be any designated WINvote unit).

"There's a number of applications for the WINmanager," says Larry Ensminger, vice president of AVS, "not all of which are being used today. For example, it can be connected to a county's voter registration system... they could be online with registration so when you come in and present yourself, they can check the validity of your registration in the precinct, assign you a ballot station, and they can up date your voter history."

The company also offers a WINstage warehouse management system -- the units, like most election equipment, are stored generally stored in a county owned warehouse when not in use -- used prior to elections that poll staffers can use to populate the WINvotes with a database of voting selections. The company even offers an absentee ballot scanning system called WINscan.

The system, and the wireless built in, is all about taking away the interaction the election system has with the poll workers -- generally well meaning volunteers, but not exactly faultless. Ensminger points to the notorious 2000 election and the problems in Florida. "A lot of the problems stemmed from the poll workers interacting with voting systems," he says. " We want to streamline that process and reduce the amount of interaction."

At the end of the day, final tabulated ballots are transferred to a central office, usually the county court house either via a built-in modem or using CDPD or a cellular modem.

Of course, security is key for such a system. By keeping the votes locked to one system during voting time, there's no data transfer that could be hacked, and individuals can only get on the system when using a smart card controlled by the polling staffers. The final wireless transfer to the WINmanager system at the end of polling is 128-bit WEP encrypted, plus they've added extra transaction encryption.

Mike Brown, IT Manager at AVS says in their tests they have not been able to hack the units. "Everyone who comes in says my kids can hack your system and we say, 'No, you can't!'" Still, the company admits the security issue is a fear they constantly contend with when talking with customers.

AVS announced that the state of California has certified the WINvote system for use. It's already been used in the November 2002 elections in six jurisdictions around Virginia and one area in Mississippi.