At 21:51 05-11-2002 -0500, Joe Hale wrote:
Quite simple: because developing such a system is not a one-person job. System development projects require cooperation between a number of people; if one programmer would slip in such a line of code, an other programmer on the team (or any other team member) would eventually notice, at the latest during the testing phase. Further, I think it is likely that after the finished project has been turned over to the government, the government will have it checked again.Here in Georgia, the voting was completely automated. I'll admit I felt a little uneasy with no visible ballot. The touch screen voting machines installed over the last two years lack the advantage of transparency. How do I know that in the thousands of lines of programming code someone didn't slip in a line of code that subtly skews the results?
The only way such a line of code would go unnoticed would be if the entire development team, as well as the government people who ordered the development, would be corrupt. That is extremely unlikely.
(Cool! I do not have my CompSci degree yet, but all that studying is already being useful!)
The same applies to other systems. Every system that uses a machine to do the counting is not transparent, because the ordinary citizen will not be able to analyse the programming. Even if you do everything manually, it is still not entirely transparent; once you deposit your ballot in the box, it is out of sight -- how can you be sure that someone on the counting team will not give your vote to an other candidate, or let your ballot disappear?I don't mean to sound paranoid and I'm not a Ludite. But even though computers have lots of advantages, their functioning is not transparent to the ordinary citizen.
Jeroen "Europe Rulez!" van Baardwijk
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