David has responded to Dan as follows (note much skiped):
> >There is no doubt whatsoever that the sanctity of a vote once
> >cast can be absolutely preserved as it is moved from your house
> >to the counting house. What cannot be done, now or ever, is to
> >ensure the sanctity of the voting booth anywhere but in a
> >physical and, yes, public location attended to by persons both
<skip>
> So I typically elect to vote by mail. Is my vote worthless because of
that?
I know that the US allows voting by mail. Many other countries do not. The
reason for not allowing it in many countries, or restricting it to special
circumstances where physical voting is impossible, is due to the security
concern Dan raised. It is of course possible to decide that the advantages
of allowing voting from home, for a particular purpose, outweight the
security concerns. This is a legitimate tradeoff and the right choice
depends on the particulars of each election.
The reason I'm writing all this is because I resented David's end note:
<skip>
> So standing in line with the masses like some Russian waiting for
> bread somehow immunizes against voter fraud?
<skip>
> Yeah right... real purty flame there, real Daughters of the American
> Revolution material, blood of the liberators and all, but how about a
real
> argument? Or is your retro dogma supposed to be lapped up
> on the basis of your empty, inflamatory assertions
As I explained, I believe that there are serious advantages and risks to
both approaches, and in any case a civilized discussion is more fruitful
(and fun) than name-calling and offensive methaphors. Furthermore I think
Dan clearly made a real argument, to which David's only answer was `well if
it's a problem how come a comparably insecure sceanrio is acceptable in my
case` - and even that argument could have been made more clearly. There are
better counter arguments, such as that physical attendance is a substantial
barrier for some voters so by requiring it we deny them their right and may
tilt the results.
I'll conclude by noting two important differences between mail voting and
Internet voting; I hope David will allow them as `real arguments`...
1. Mail voting is a non-trivial process, and in many cases less convinient
than Internet voting; as a result it is also acceptable in many cases to
restrict it to special circumstances. Internet voting may be much more
convinient and hence popular, therefore concerns about its security may be
more critical.
2. Physical mail is very low-tech. This means that it is available to
(well, almost) every elligible voter. Presently, convinient Internet access
is not yet available to weak populations. Therefore by making Internet
voting so much easier, weak populations may be (even less) represented than
today.
3. Existing operating systems used by Internet machines are far from being
secure. Therefore if Internet voting will allow voting using any browser
and OS, then a virus could easily vote for many users...
To be fair, concerns 2 and 3 above may be addressed if the government will
create a `secure voting` device and distribute one for each voter, the
device requiring you just to connect it to the phone (or maybe not even
this?). It is doable, in theory. And maybe it will be done once. Maybe. And
maybe these devices will even be trustworthy. Maybe.
Until then, I prefer traditional voting for critical decisions.
Best Regards,
Amir Herzberg
IBM Research Lab in Haifa (Tel Aviv Office)
http://www.hrl.il.ibm.com
