[LINK] [UK] Call for e-voting to be scrapped amid security fears

[Craig Sanders]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 08:10:09AM +0930, Janet Hawtin wrote:
> Can you test it on voting re surveys in shopping centres or for big
> brother or jjj at football events?

it's not really intended for junk like that.

by "surveys", i mean stuff like "surverying shareholders to see what
they want their company to do". not marketing drivel.

amongst other projects, we did the National Student Mock Election in
the US in 2004. several million (can't remember the exact number - but
it was lots) high-school students voting in an accurate mockup of the
real election.  the system held up under the load.


> open code makes testing more robust because we all care about whether
> this code is honest. the code should be in service of the democratic
> process not in service of the software vendor. ed felten has done
> surveys of the usa problems. http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1064

absolutely.  i'm still dead-set against e-voting, even with open code.
the benefits are negligible and the risks are enormous.

it takes people (lots of people) out of the vote-counting process, which
is just asking for trouble. with enough people scrutineering, it's
almost impossible to corrupt the electoral process to any significant
degree...but when you reduce it to a bunch of computers and a handful of
people, you only need to corrupt/threaten a few people to corrupt the
election.

there are also serious issues of anonymity vs security (choose one or
the other, but not both with e-voting), and vote-buying/vote-coercion.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>

If you look rather casual with the knife when you flick it open, people
don't like it.
		-- Gerry Youghkins