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

[Charles Shapiro]

Jim, I honestly doubt that your first sentence is correct. The financial
industry has
had almost a generation's experience with electronic transactions, and yet
every bank I know of still wants
all activity tied ultimately to physical pieces of paper.   We agree that
'The problem with today's electronic voting is that it just isn't mature
enough". We disagree only on whether it will ever be mature enough.

That said, I don't necessarily object to computers and electronics in
certain election roles. I'm happy to have my paper ballot machine-counted,
as long as it exists and can be re-counted on different machines.  But
surely my vote is as sacred as my money?

-- CHS


On 3/16/06, Jim Popovitch <jimpop at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Nothing is preventing the same capabilities from being implemented in
> electronic voting.  As Joe pointed out, Bruce discussed this years ago.
>   The problem with today's electronic voting is that it just isn't
> mature enough.  BUT, is the solution to discount/discard it until it is
> perfect (perfection is in the eye of the beholder), or is the solution
> to keep vigilant and work at enhancing it.   Take the "case" of a single
> person being able to alter the post-election results... just make sure
> that a single person never has that oppty, or have duplicate/triplicate
> results so that they can be individually tracked.  Electronic voting may
> be new, and may have it's shortcomings, but with the right
> implementation guides it can be much less subject to fraud and much more
> accurate and easier to use.
>
> -Jim P.
>
> Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> > "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."
> >
> > Yep - so learned Gaius Baltar!
> >
> > Jeff
> >
> > Charles Shapiro wrote:
> >
> >> 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
> >> <mailto: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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> >>
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