[LINK] New proposal for e-voting - Turnbull

[Jim Birch]

Kim Holburn <kim.holburn at gmail.com> wrote:

Which reminds me again (we have had this discussion before) that EMF
> radiation from normal computers and monitors can make it possible to detect
> from a distance what people vote.  I believe e-voting machines were banned
> in the Netherlands for that reason.


It's worth remembering that democracy is a cultural practice with legal and
technical aspects rather than a legal or technical system.  Democracy works
when it is normative.  Absolute security can't be achieved anywhere - it's
always a cost/risk thing - so it's pie in the sky to expect it in a voting
system, manual or computerised.  We would just need to back up the the
common expectation of privacy of one's vote with good technical design and
some appropriately powerful legal sanctions against electronic manipulation
or eavesdropping, if the current sanctions aren't sufficient.

- Jim