I spoke today with Kenneth Egger, the VP in charge of Internet methodology at the American Arbitration Association. Here is the gist of what he told me: 1) The A.A.A. has already assisted online voting successfully for a number of organizations, including a large, dispersed trade union. 2) The A.A.A. does not have computer programs of its own for this, but has assisted the organizations which it helped to write their own. 3) The function of the A.A.A. has been to supervise and authenticate the procedure, much as U.N. inspectors supervise voting in politically unstable countries (an apt parallel, don't you think?). 4) The most important and difficult task, according to Mr. Egger, is the authentication of the identity of the voters, in particular the legal identity of their name with a postal address. I suggested that this might be replaced by digital authentication procedures; Mr. Egger remained skeptical. (There was not much problem in the previous cases of online voting because all the members were known.) Mr. Egger suggested that perhaps the postal service could be used for identity checking, but then why not use it for voting as well? 5) I explained that there was a very great time constraint in the present situation, and that the DNSO could not possibly write its own voting program in so short a space of time. He said that he will query the organizations that have already done online voting to see if they would "lend" us their programs. 6) I asked what A.A.A.'s fees for supervising the procedure would be, but he refused to commit himself. 7) He should get back to me tomorrow or the next day. __________________________________________________ To receive the digest version instead, send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNSUBSCRIBE, forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Problems/suggestions regarding this list? Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___END____________________________________________
