The Universidad Iberoamericana (UNIBE), the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM) and the Instituto Tecnológico de las Americas (ITLA) issued positive preliminary opinions on the automated voting system chosen by the Central Electoral Board (JCE).
The JCE had requested the opinion after discarding offers from Participación Ciudadana civic watchdog group for an independent audit of the system.
The Central Electoral Board (JCE) instead has made available a summary of the fundamental findings presented in the preliminary professional opinion on the automated voting model developed by the Pontificia Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM), Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), Universidad Iberoamericana (UNIBE) and Instituto Tecnológico de las Américas (ITLA) universities at the request of the JCE.
The four universities presented their preliminary professional opinions on Friday, 27 September 2019 to the plenary of the JCE. Monsignor Alfredo de la Cruz Baldera, representing PUCMM; Rolando Guzmán, representing INTEC; José Pérez Gómez, representing UNIBE; and José Armando Tavárez, representing ITLA, were accompanied by their technical teams when the announcement was made.
According to the preliminary professional opinion, the three areas evaluated by the universities were: 1) non-traceability in capturing votes; 2) off-line operations and 3) guaranteeing that the results are auditable.
Regarding non-traceability in vote capture, the objective was to evaluate that the application does not register voter data and that it guarantees the secrecy of the vote. Connected verifications were made in the central database and the local database. The result was satisfactory.
Regarding offline operations, the universities explained that the objective was to understand that the system works operationally without an internet connection. The system will only be connected to a private network of telephone service providers when giving the zero bulletin and transmitting the results. Operational verifications were carried out from two perspectives: hardware, and transmission security and data integrity. The results were satisfactory.
Finally, as for the guarantee that the results are auditable, the objective set was to verify that it is auditable and verifiable and that the sum of the physical votes deposited in the polls of the voting tables coincides with the report of the results of the table. The local database and central server database was compared against the printed votes. “The result was satisfactory. In both cases (local and central server), the data reflected in the local database and in the dashboards of the central server were verified and obtained the same amount of votes as in the tests.”
The JCE said the universities will be issuing a definitive professional opinion with recommendations.
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Hoy
El Caribe
Listin Diario
30 September 2019