Section 3-177-753 - Electronic voting systems, transmission, receipt, and tabulation of votes(a) The transmission or receipt of vote data, including but not limited to votes, vote tabulation, or similar information shall be permitted between locations authorized by the chief election officer or clerk in the case of county elections. Election results, accumulated from said transmissions, may be distributed to the general public while awaiting receipt of the ballots, vote data storage media, or other materials associated with the transmissions and the completion of any procedures intended to verify the proper transmission and accumulation of data.(b) "Vote data storage media" is the means of storing vote data such as a PCMCIA card or other device that may be secured in the voting equipment or any part of the overall voting system.(c) The following requirements shall be employed when transmitting election data electronically: (1) The voting system shall be self-contained and not connected to any network infrastructure that is not under the direct control of the office of elections or the clerk in the case of county elections;(2) The transmission and accumulation of election results shall be subject to a testing and-verification prior to the election;(3) The electronic transmission of official-election vote data, shall occur via virtual private network or other secured network. Where possible and to the extent that the voting system design permits, data transfers between system components should incorporate the use of digital signatures or encryption to authenticate the data for the particular election.(4) Accumulated election results shall be considered uncertified unless it can be independently verified prior to transmission and following receipt and until certified by the chief election officer. Independent verification may be accomplished via manual inspection of election results prior to and following electronic transmission or by employing the use of a cryptographic hashing algorithm on randomly selected data files prior to and after transmission.(c) Any election results transmitted by modem shall be considered "uncertified" unless transmitted via a virtual private network or until compiled directly from the source media.(d) In elections where voting results are tabulated at multiple locations and accumulated at a central location, election results tabulated and produced at the distributed counting center locations shall be considered the source of election results for verification purposes. [Eff JUL 26 2020] (Auth: HRS §§ 11-4) (Imp: HRS §§ 11-104, 11-108, 16-2, 16-41 through 16-47)