Panel: Limit vote data access

BY TYLER WHITLEY
Richmond TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Dec 3, 2004

The State Board of Elections wants to prevent the public from seeing documents describing voting security assessments or audits by local electoral boards in Virginia.

Security of voting machines was a major issue across the nation during last month's presidential election.

Yesterday at a meeting of the Freedom of Information Advisory Council, elections board representatives asked the council to endorse legislation that would make a new exemption for such documents in the Freedom of Information Act.

Such a change would have to be passed by the 2005 General Assembly.
   

Rosanna Bencoach,manager of the election board's policy division, said the board is worried that hackers could break into new computerized voting equipment using information obtained from the audits.

She cited the danger of learning passwords used by election officials to gain access to the computerized equipment.

J. Stewart Bryan III, publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and a member of the advisory council, objected saying voting should be subjected to public scrutiny.

The advisory council took no position on the election board's proposal.

The council did recommend, however, a sweeping change in the FOI act to allow greater use of electronic meetings by state public bodies.

Currently, a state agency is allowed to hold 25 percent of its meetings by video or telephone. It must give 30 days' notice before doing so.

The proposed change would allow a state agency to hold all but one meeting per year electronically. The required time for notification of electronic meetings would be reduced to seven days.

Only nine such electronic meetings have been held in five years by any state agency, mostly by the community college system, said Maria Everett, executive director of the FOIA council.