[LINK] E-Voting Undermines Public Confidence In Elections Even Without Evidence

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

E-Voting Undermines Public Confidence In Elections Even Without Evidence 
of Wrongdoing
from the conflict-of-interest dept
Timothy Lee
Tech Dirt
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080120/07521615.shtml

Are Republican operatives scheming to steal the election in Maryland 
this fall? Threat Level 
<http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/company-connect.html> is 
reporting that the contract for transporting e-voting machines in the 
state has been contracted to a company whose president was the head of 
the state Republican party until 2006.

I think the answer is almost certainly "no": while this certainly looks 
like a conflict of interest, I suspect it's no more than an honest 
oversight that will be quickly corrected. Still, it's troubling that we 
even have to worry about who transports voting machines.

With ordinary paper ballots, it doesn't matter who transports them 
because there's nothing a moving company can do to undermine the 
election. But with e-voting machines, a moving company really could 
install malicious software that would undermine the election. And once 
an e-voting machines has been tampered with, there's no reliable 
mechanism for detecting the problem.

Again, there's no evidence anything untoward has occurred in Maryland. 
But no matter who transports those e-voting machines, the public is 
being asked to take it on faith that they won't be tampered with.

In a well-designed voting system, voters shouldn't have to take anyone's 
actions on faith. The entire process should be simple and transparent, 
so that anyone can observe it and verify that it was carried out correctly.

The complexity and opacity of e-voting machines makes effective public 
scrutiny impossible, and so it's a bad idea even in the absence of 
specific evidence of wrongdoing.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community.

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Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au