On 2/23/12 6:36 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
2012/2/23 Jameson Quinn <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>2. You could use secure machines, booted from CD with no hard drive, at polling stations.Of course, if you're using polling stations anyway, you should be printing hand-marked or at least voter-verified paper ballots and giving cryptographically-verifiable receipts.
in my opinion, there is nothing that replaces hand marking ballots where the candidates' names are printed directly on the ballot, so there is no chance of an alignment (or "registration") problem that was apparent for the punch-card ballots and ballot "machines" (the are really just a jig, not much of a machine there). this intrinsically takes care of the "paper backup" problem in the best manner. the paper record is the original document.
then, of course, the paper ballot is optically scanned. and the scanning machine (that "empties" into the ballot box) lives at the precinct polling location. it's the only truly secure manner to collect the votes (so that there is no wholesale effort to proxy vote for a large class of people) and to shepherd the paper ballot records to where they need to be for any recount.
perhaps there could be a machine in some places for blind people to vote with no human help (preserving their secret vote). i do not know if every precinct would need it, but perhaps the electronic voting machine to aid the blind (but it will continue to carry the risks of electronic voting) could live at a central polling place (like in city hall or something) to serve the needs of voters who are already identified as legally blind.
for some reason, i don't see why this method is ever challenged in favor of a better method. except for the blind voter who wants to vote by secret ballot, there is no better method than the optical-scanned paper ballot.
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