(10 ILCS 5/23-15.1)
Sec. 23-15.1. Production of ballot counting code and attendance of
witnesses. All voting-system vendors shall, within 90 days after the adoption
of rules or upon application for voting-system approval, place in escrow all
computer code for its voting system with the State Board of Elections. The
State Board of Elections shall promulgate rules to implement this Section. For
purposes of this Section, the term "computer code" includes, but is not limited
to, ballot counting source code, table structures, modules, program narratives,
and other human readable computer instructions used to count ballots.
Any computer code submitted by vendors to the State Board of Elections shall be
considered strictly confidential and the intellectual property of the vendors
and shall not be subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of
Information Act.
The State Board of Elections shall determine which software components of a
voting system it deems necessary to enable the review and verification of the
computer. The State Board of Elections shall secure and
maintain all
proprietary computer codes in strict confidence and shall make a
computer code available to authorized persons in
connection with an election contest or pursuant to any State or federal court
order.
In an election contest, each party to the contest may designate one or more
persons who are authorized to receive the computer code of the
relevant voting systems. The person or persons authorized to receive the
relevant computer code shall enter into a confidentiality
agreement with the State Board of Elections and must exercise the highest
degree of reasonable care to maintain the confidentiality of all proprietary
information.
The State Board of Elections shall promulgate rules to provide for the
security, review, and verification of computer codes.
Verification
includes, but is not limited to, determining that the computer
code corresponds to computer instructions actually in use to count ballots.
The State Board of Elections shall hire, contract with, or otherwise provide sufficiently qualified resources, both human and capital, to conduct the reviews with the greatest possible expectation of thoroughness, completeness, and effectiveness. The resources shall be independent of and have no business, personal, professional, or other affiliation with any of the system vendors currently or prospectively supplying voting systems to any county in the State of Illinois. Nothing in this Section shall impair the obligation of any contract between a
voting-systems vendor and an election authority that provides access to
computer code that is equal to or greater than that provided by
this Section.
(Source: P.A. 93-574, eff. 8-21-03; 94-645, eff. 8-22-05.)
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