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SF Open Source Voting TAC

Official site of the San Francisco Open Source Voting System Technical Advisory Committee (OSVTAC)

Open Source Voting System Project Recommendations

(Approved by OSVTAC on March 14, 2019.)

Last posted: June 9, 2019

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For copyright and attribution information for this work, see this section. The source files for the text can be found on GitHub here.

3. Background

3.1. History of Open Source Voting in San Francisco

To provide context to the recommendations in this document, this section describes some of the history of the open source voting topic in San Francisco government.

In May 2007, the San Francisco Elections Commission passed a resolution that, among other things, established a policy that the Department of Elections give priority to voting systems that “provide the maximum level of security and transparency possible consistent with the principles of public disclosure.” However, like today, no certified open source voting systems were available at that time.

In December 2007 the City, through the Department of Elections, entered into contract with Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. for a new, proprietary voting system. In June 2010, Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. acquired Sequoia and assumed Sequoia’s contract. The Department and City extended the contract with Dominion more than once. The current contract is scheduled to end at the end of 2018. The total cost of the extended contract over the eleven years (including hardware and hardware maintenance, software license fees, and election services) was approximately $22 million, with $9.6 million of that up front. This averages to around $2 million per year (see this table for an annual breakdown).

In November 2008, the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance creating a Voting Systems Task Force (VSTF) to provide the City with recommendations on voting systems and related matters, including “models for [the] development of a voting system including proprietary, disclosed and open source software and hardware approaches.”

In June 2011, the VSTF issued its final report, “Recommendations on Voting Systems for the City and County of San Francisco” (57 pages). Here are two excerpts from the recommendation text that mention open source (from page 52):

2.5.4.3 Transparency, Source Code Disclosure, Licensing, and Contingency Planning

6. The DOE should give strong preference to a voting system licensing structure that gives San Francisco all of the rights provided by an OSI-approved license, even if the system is maintained by an external party.

…

8. San Francisco should be an active participant in the movement toward more open and transparent voting systems. We acknowledge the complexity of moving from the existing marketplace toward more innovative voting systems and urge San Francisco to move steadily toward the goal of transparency—even if it must do so in incremental steps.

In December 2014, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution supporting the creation of open source voting systems and requesting that the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) conduct a feasibility study. In October 2015, LAFCo issued its final report, “Study on Open Source Voting Systems” (37 pages).

In November 2015, the Elections Commission unanimously passed an Open Source Voting Systems Resolution (PDF) (also in plain-text; both from the Commission’s “Motions and Resolutions” page) requesting that the Mayor and Board of Supervisors initiate and fund a project to develop and certify an open source voting system.

In August 2016, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee signed the City and County of San Francisco’s two-year budget for the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 fiscal years. The budget allocated $300,000 towards the planning phase of an open source voting system project. Below are two excerpts from the proposed budget document that reference the open source voting project.

The section for the Department of Elections references the project on pages 204-205:

As the City’s current voting system nears end-of-life, the proposed budget includes $300,000 towards planning and development of a new voting system based on open source software. If completed, San Francisco would be the first City to do this. Development of an open source voting system would enable the City to own the voting system’s software and to have a choice of publicly releasing it under open source license. Additionally, other jurisdictions as well as the general people could use, participate, and improve the software.

The section for the Committee on Information Technology (COIT) includes the project as one of five highlighted projects out of twenty-four, alongside initiatives like the City’s new Digital Services Team, cybersecurity, and improving the City’s network (pages 447-448):

ANNUAL PROJECTS

…

Over the two-year period, the proposed budget recommends $15.7 million of General Fund COIT allocation to support 24 projects. Below are a few highlighted projects.

…

OPEN SOURCE VOTING SYSTEM

As the City’s current voting system is aging, the Department of Elections is exploring an opportunity to develop a new voting system based on open source software. If completed, San Francisco would be the first city to do this. Development of an open source voting system would enable the City to own the voting system’s software and have a choice of publicly releasing it under an open source license. Additionally, other jurisdictions as well as the general public could use and improve the software. The proposed budget supports initial project planning and scoping of this project.

In April 2017, the Board of Supervisors approved the City’s fourth Five-Year Information & Communication Technology (ICT) Plan for Fiscal Years 2018-22. The plan included the open source voting system project among four major IT projects under consideration for the future, alongside projects like Universal Broadband and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). For example, on page 11:

However, several future projects are currently being scoped out as potentially the City’s next Major IT Project, including:

…

Voting System Replacement: The Department of Elections is currently investigating alternative voting systems, including the possibility of building an open source system.

And on page 53:

Future Major IT Projects

In addition, the City has begun investigating what may become the next major technology project. Before beginning any new technology venture, the City recommends extensive planning and scoping to better understand the true cost of any new technology. The City has begun evaluating various different projects that may be considered as major investments, which include:

…

Voting System Replacement: The City’s current voting system license is set to expire in 2018. Without a long-term contract in place, the City has an opportunity to pursue alternative voting systems that could promote transparency and more security. The City is currently investigating alternative options, including the possibility of building an open source system.

In April 2017, the Elections Commission voted to create an Open Source Voting System Technical Advisory Committee to “provide technical guidance, ideas, and support to the Elections Commission (’Commission’) on ways to improve and help ensure the success of the City and County of San Francisco’s open source voting system project.” The Commission voted on the Committee’s initial membership at its May meeting. The Committee was fully constituted on June 2, 2017, when the appointment of the fifth member was made final.

In May 2017, the Department of Elections issued an RFP (REG RFP #2017‑01) for a contractor to “prepare a business case for developing an accessible, open source voting system.” The RFP would use a portion of the $300,000 budgeted in August 2016. In September 2017, Slalom was selected as the winning bidder. Slalom’s deliverable will be due in January 2018, and it will inform the City’s next budget process, which will begin around that time. See here for Slalom’s RFP response, the City’s contract with Slalom, and Appendix A and Appendix B of the contract.

The Department of Elections’ contract for its current voting system expires at the end of December 2018. The Director of Elections is aiming to lease an interim system from that point forward that can be used while an open source voting system is developed and certified. The RFP for the interim system may be issued as early as the fall of 2017.

3.2. Voting System

3.2.1. Definition

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 defines a voting system as follows (from 52 USC §21081: Voting systems standards):

(b) Voting system defined
 In this section, the term "voting system" means—
 (1) the total combination of mechanical, electromechanical,
  or electronic equipment (including the software, firmware,
  and documentation required to program, control, and support
  the equipment) that is used—
  (A) to define ballots;
  (B) to cast and count votes;
  (C) to report or display election results; and
  (D) to maintain and produce any audit trail information; and
 (2) the practices and associated documentation used—
  (A) to identify system components and versions of such
   components;
  (B) to test the system during its development and maintenance;
  (C) to maintain records of system errors and defects;
  (D) to determine specific system changes to be made to a system
   after the initial qualification of the system; and
  (E) to make available any materials to the voter (such as
   notices, instructions, forms, or paper ballots).

3.3. Other Voting System Projects

This section includes information about some of the other voting system projects that are either (1) open source and have been or plan to be used in a US jurisdiction, or (2) are or were being developed by a jurisdiction in the US.

Special attention is paid in this section towards whether the various projects are open source because that determines whether and to what extent the source code will be available for use in San Francisco’s project.

3.3.1. New Hampshire - Prime III

[TODO]

3.3.2. Los Angeles County - VSAP

Los Angeles County has been planning or working on its Voting Systems Assessment Project (VSAP) at least since 2009, when it held an event at Caltech on September 16, 2009. VSAP is a project for Los Angeles County to develop its own voting system using a “voter-centered approach.“ The project is led by Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (RR/CC) Dean Logan.

There is conflicting evidence as to whether any of the VSAP system will be open source and, if so, how much. On the one hand, press coverage of the project frequently mentions that the system will be open source, and Mr. Logan says it will be open source when he speaks publicly and is quoted in the media. For example, in this tweet he says, “Encouraging to see movement in this direction. #LACounty advances #opensource in #votingmodernization effort too.“

Los Angeles County’s April 24, 2017 VSAP RFI #17-001 also supports the view that it will be open source. For example, on page 24, it says:

Accordingly, RR/CC is considering a Copyleft type of license such as GNU General Public License (GPL) or OSET Public License (OPL), that promotes “forever free” provisions, however it has not ruled out the use of more “permissive” open source licenses, such as the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0 (MPL), the Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), the BSD 3.0 or MIT licenses. Whatever the chosen license, the transparency and ability to share the IP and the technology would need to be ensured. … LA County is seeking candid feedback from the vendor community on the intellectual property approach for VSAP.

On the other hand, there is no obvious mention of open source on VSAP’s main website (e.g. on its “Principles“ page). Moreover, Los Angeles County’s 54-page RFP Phase 1: #17-008, which was issued five months after the RFI on September 18, 2017 to prequalify vendors, does not mention open source. The Phase 1 RFP also describes a new “Tally System“ the County is working on:

A new Tally System is required to capture and process ballot images so that vote selections on paper ballots can be digitally counted. This includes votes cast on BMD ballots at Vote Centers, as well as on Vote By Mail ballots. Similar to the ECBMS, RR/CC is currently developing the software required for the new Tally System in anticipation of a pilot in June 2018.

Los Angeles County submitted its VSAP Tally Version 1.0 to the California Secretary of State for certification on September 19, 2017. See their application for approval here (PDF, 21 pages).

However, even though the County is developing the Tally System and submitted it for certification, as of October 2017, none of the code for the Tally System appears to be publicly available, let alone open source. In addition, on page 41 of the RFP in Section 6.2 “Non-Disclosure Agreement,“ the RFP says—

Prime Contractor-Led Teams who are prequalified as a result of this RFP Phase 1 will be required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) as part of RFP Phase 2 prior to receiving County IP.

The requirement to sign an NDA seems inconsistent with the technology being open source.

Finally, in response to an October 5 question on Twitter about whether VSAP will be open source, Mr. Logan replied:

Open source platform for UI and tally; publicly owned design specs and code. More detail in RFI docs at http://vsap.lavote.net

And in a second reply:

Tally stack is all open source; details of licensing for custom code will be in Phase II RFP & was discussed in RFI; all publicly owned.

So if “platform“ and “stack“ refer to things like the operating system, database, programming language, etc. but not the code itself, it seems possible that none of the code will be open source but instead simply be “publicly owned.“ It would be helpful if Los Angeles County can provide a clearer guarantee if this interpretation isn’t correct.

3.3.3. Travis County, Texas - STAR-Vote™

In 2012, Travis County, Texas started researching and designing a new voting system it called STAR-Vote™. The County spent over $330,000 in its research and design phase.

In October 2016, Travis County issued a detailed 208-page RFP covering the first phase of STAR-Vote, which was the “in-person voting module of the STAR-Vote system.“ The RFP made frequent reference to open source software. For example, on page 5:

The STAR-Vote system requirements were developed from the ground up with the purpose, among other objectives, of specifying an entire voting system developed under the open source code software model.

However, the commitment to open source seemed uncertain because the RFP said the code would start out not as open source but as disclosed source, and possibly be made open source later. For example, on page 37 (note the phrase, “with a view toward ultimately …“):

Source code for all modules would be published, but usage rights for actual elections as well as derivative rights (as in using the code to create a derivative voting system) would be controlled by Travis County (and/or consortium) with a view toward ultimately releasing usage and derivative rights under a “suitable” (as determined by Travis County and/or consortium) open source license that would allow and encourage preparation of third-party derivative work, recognizing that voting systems must be state and federally certified;

The RFP was accompanied by an additional 16-page “Statement of Intent“ document, which sought $25 million (initially a minimum of $15 million) for an entity (likely a non-profit) called the “STAR-Vote Entity.“

On September 28, 2017, Travis County announced via a press release that the County would not be pursuing STAR-Vote. From their Final Report (6 pages)–

In a nutshell, we have run into too many obstacles. There has not been enough funding, time, or support to bring STAR-Vote into the phase of being a start-up, through development and the legally-required certification process and then into use.

3.4. Resources

This section contains links to other resources and documents that may be useful for the project.

3.4.1. San Francisco

3.4.2. Procurement

3.4.4. Other Open Source Voting Projects and Research

[Subsection added: Jan. 18, 2018 meeting; edited: June 14, 2018 meeting.]

3.4.5. Open Source Voting Organizations

3.4.6. Election Data Standards & Organizations

3.4.7. California Election Laws and Regulations

[Subsection added: Jan. 18, 2018 meeting.]

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For copyright and attribution information for this work, see this section. The source files for the text can be found on GitHub here.