At 11:46 PM 2/1/2007, Brian Olson wrote: >Rivest pointed out in his discussion of 3-ballot that posting actual >images of ballots is bad because it allows for covert channels of >information which destroy secrecy.
Then secrecy is already destroyed, except that it is only violated with regard to election observers. > Some thug can instruct you to make such and such mark astray on > your ballot, then look for it to make sure you voted the way he > told you to (or paid you to). That's interesting. It is defeated by using equipment that prints filled-out ballots (which could be any PC with a printer). The voter hands in the ballot after verifying that it is correct. Ballots with extraneous marks can then be discarded. This would also eliminate the substantial level of voting ambiguity which exists with hand-marked ballots. Another option, for hand-filled ballots, would be that any ballot with marks would be pulled and a same-marked ballot substituted, filled out under observation. If the observers are corrupt, then this problem already exists. >The primary good cause used as justification for HAVA, the Help >Americans Vote Act, is to allow disabled (blind, quadruplegic, etc) >people to vote with only the help of the machine. I think the >tradeoffs and costs of that good cause as its being implemented are >winding up being really bad. Perhaps the evil lead the good down the >road to hell by paving it with good intentions. If there is only the machine, then we have the problem of verifying that the machines are fair. However, a computer that could do the job could be constructed for, seriously, a few dollars each. There are existing devices which are voice-recognition, for example. They would validate the vote by repeating it to the voter, through headphones, then they would print the ballot. (They would only be used for blind voters who could speak and hear). Similar machines could be Braille. This is a more difficult problem, but it is one which is routinely solved for other reasons.) However, we are standing on our head to avoid a problem that is a non-problem. Many jurisdictions (all?) allow a disabled voter to take someone into the booth to help them vote. With proper rules, influencing the outcome of an election by coercing the voters in this way, would be quite difficult. And vote coercion should be a felony, anyway. Absentee ballots? If the machines are cheap, which should be possible, the software is public-source, which *is* possible, then it's possible for there to be lots of these machines. And serious voting bias could then be detected, statistically. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
