[LINK] Fwd: vip-l: The Australian: E-Voting follow-up article

[Jan Whitaker]

At 08:41 AM 26/03/2006, rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au wrote:
>>Certainly no more in-secure than postal-vote arrangements. Eg, the
>>current AEC tender for postal-voting, 'Risk Management Template'
>
>Sure, but postal voting is an exception. In what way does expanding the 
>postal voting risk profile to all voters support the argument for 
>electronic voting?

It's an interesting debate: when a technology can help a particular subset 
of society, should it? Or, is it a catalyst to solve problems that would 
help everyone, similar to the universal design concept in making 
information accessible?

I don't disagree with the dangers that have been described re e-voting, but 
are there ways to solve those problems? If the times were different and we 
trusted the government and other groups supposedly in authority, would we 
feel differently about it all? Remember when ATMS weren't trusted? Heck, 
remember when everyone hated computers? That is in my lifetime and things 
have changed a lot to reduce that fear, mostly when they got into people's 
hands instead of specialists only. Not that the dangers are any less, in 
fact they are probably more. But we don't think twice about using a little 
plastic card to get money out of a hole in the wall on the street today.

Jan



JLWhitaker Associates
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com - http://www.janwhitaker.com
Personal stuff: http://member.melbpc.org.au/~jwhit/

'Seed planting is often the most important step. Without the seed, there is 
no plant.' - JW, April 2005
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