Mass disenfranchisement through 'loosing' of voter registrations or similar means is still viable. Voter ID cards might reduce dead people voting and some things but has obvious privacy concerns. Purging of 'felons' also doesn't help any.
I will agree that slots and ATMs do have a lot higher standards right now. The point I was trying to make is that no standard, however high, is acceptable.
True it is possible with encryption to transmit the vote and confirm it without letting a 3rd party intercept it. What if you WANT the 3rd party to intercept it though? So you can collect $100 for voting 'right' for example. Just let them watch your screen as you cast your ballot.
The real problems though are what happens when all or part of the second party (i.e., the government/Diebold or some of thier employees) wants to currupt the vote? There's no electronic audit trail that can't be forged by someone with sufficient knowledge, skill and drive. Encryption can make it harder to forge a vote but does little to prevent selective loosing.
Paper ballots have a lot of problems, theft being the most obvious. However we can track that fairly well (election monitors (both/all parties( count how many were sent and how many arrived). I prefer a system where the amount of curruption can be measured and, if large enough, a recount is called (not what we really have now but achievable). Electronic voting systems inherently require either a trusted party or a way to track who voted what way to measure/prevent curruption. Neither are acceptable for political voting. That means that curruption with electronic ballots isn't really measurable. Exit polling comparisons can be used but we've seen just how effective they are at convincing people about curruption. Basically electronic-only systems cannot work acceptably so we should concentrate on improving the current systems without electronic means.
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Re: Americans spend more time researching a car purchase...
Date: 2006-08-01 04:49 pm (UTC)Mass disenfranchisement through 'loosing' of voter registrations or similar means is still viable. Voter ID cards might reduce dead people voting and some things but has obvious privacy concerns. Purging of 'felons' also doesn't help any.
I will agree that slots and ATMs do have a lot higher standards right now. The point I was trying to make is that no standard, however high, is acceptable.
True it is possible with encryption to transmit the vote and confirm it without letting a 3rd party intercept it. What if you WANT the 3rd party to intercept it though? So you can collect $100 for voting 'right' for example. Just let them watch your screen as you cast your ballot.
The real problems though are what happens when all or part of the second party (i.e., the government/Diebold or some of thier employees) wants to currupt the vote? There's no electronic audit trail that can't be forged by someone with sufficient knowledge, skill and drive. Encryption can make it harder to forge a vote but does little to prevent selective loosing.
Paper ballots have a lot of problems, theft being the most obvious. However we can track that fairly well (election monitors (both/all parties( count how many were sent and how many arrived). I prefer a system where the amount of curruption can be measured and, if large enough, a recount is called (not what we really have now but achievable). Electronic voting systems inherently require either a trusted party or a way to track who voted what way to measure/prevent curruption. Neither are acceptable for political voting. That means that curruption with electronic ballots isn't really measurable. Exit polling comparisons can be used but we've seen just how effective they are at convincing people about curruption. Basically electronic-only systems cannot work acceptably so we should concentrate on improving the current systems without electronic means.