[ale] OT: Free Showing of "Invisible Ballots", Thursday, 3/16, 7:00pm, UUCA

[Charles Shapiro]

And hey, the great thing about paper ballots is that YOU HAVE THE BALLOTS.
So you can do things like re-count them and examine them for evidence of
tampering. At least you can determine whether fraud has taken place.

Electronic voting records, by contrast, have no physical manifestation. They
can be changed, deleted, or added without the possibility of an
authoritative audit.

-- CHS


On 3/16/06, Joe Knapka <jknapka at kneuro.net> wrote:
>
> Jim Popovitch wrote:
> > While no one can say that electronic voting is 100% secure and valid, it
> > has also been shown (for decades) that manual voting is full of fraud,
> > much fraud.  There have been cases of paying people to vote, dead people
> > voting, etc. (btw, mostly for liberal leaning candidates).
> >
> > The technological solution at least offers means for improvement. As we
> > have seen recently in Georgia there is a large number of people against
> > showing proper ID to vote (even though they have to show ID to cash a
> > check at the bank).  So I say enable technology to solve the problems
> > that people themselves can't.  Should we trust everyone, No.  But you
> > have to trust someone, else your life is shallow and difficult. ;-)
>
> I shouldn't have to trust *anyone* with my vote.  I should
> be able to anonymously and securely verify that my vote,
> as cast, has been properly accounted in election results.
> It is perfectly possible to do this (see "Applied
> Cryptography" by Bruce Schneier; there's a whole chapter
> on election protocols), and clearly any such solution will
> involve electronic voting.  However, existing electronic
> voting systems do not implement anything like the proper
> security measures, and are therefore far *more* vulnerable
> to tampering than are paper ballots. With the Diebold
> machines, a *single person* with the right password can
> completely and un-traceably change election results (which
> is just one among a great many other flaws). Yes, election
> fraud has been committed with paper ballots, but at least
> in that case, you need a conspiracy in order to accomplish
> such a thing. So until a secure and voter-verifiable system
> exists, just say no to electronic ballot boxes.
>
> (And incidentally, "voter-verifiable" does NOT mean simply
> printing out a copy of the ballot.  That's a meaningless
> gesture whose purpose is merely to lull the sheep into
> a false sense of security.)
>
> -- JK
>
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