On 4/16/06, Jack Carroll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Maybe not, but it doesn't depend on any technology that only trained > specialists can understand and validate. Any citizen can understand it at a > glance, and see that there's no way to create a discrepancy between what the > voter saw and what's recorded on the ballot. Everything is directly visible > to _unaided_ human senses. Remember, it's as important for the soundness of > the republic that the public be able to verify that the electoral process is > correct, as that it actually be correct.
I see where you're coming from with the paper ballots. They're close to tamper-proof for the average person (issues about disability and language aside). But they're still under the control of a limited group of individuals from some period of time, and eventually loaded into a machine or group of machines under limited control. People can be bought and, as we've discussed, machines can be tampered with. Even machines from competing companies simultaneously. The way I see it, paper ballots, used correctly, provide (to pull a figure out of nowhere) a 99% guarantee of a fair election. A system incorporating cryptography (so even untrusted individuals cannot alter, remove, or insert votes) could provide a 99.9% guarantee. Or, in other words, an order of magnitude more confidence in the vote tally. This is of course, assuming the two systems are similarly secured in other ways. Basically, what I'm getting at is that some peer review (inspectors, media, some locals standing around) does not equal an entire state or country independently counting votes on their PCs, by hand, or counting horse at their leisure. And, as in any situation where data must be handled by untrusted parties, encrypting that data to provide both secrecy of the content, and robust tamper protection is a must. Even if it's a simple hash printed on a paper ballot. > NH law forbids counting the ballots miles away behind closed doors. > It requires the ballots to be counted in the polling place where they were > cast, as soon as the polls close, by the moderator and the inspectors from > the opposing parties, and within public view. When the "polls close" it > doesn't mean the doors are locked. It means no more voting is allowed, and > the counting starts. I'm thinking a bit more grand than you perhaps... I'm envisioning a system where I can cryptographically verify that my vote (at least!) was as I cast it, count votes in the privacy of my own home (perhaps automated photographs of the relevant portions of paper ballots automatically posted on-line?), and, essentially, perform all the functions of a polling place (albeit unofficially) on my own, anywhere I so please. > The one real weakness with the present system, optical scanning of > hand-marked ballots, is that nobody orders a manual recount unless they > suspect an error, which they usually don't unless the election is close. An > internal fault could produce a large error as easily as a small one. So I'm > throwing around the idea that any party with an issue at stake in an > election would have the right to either make an unofficial count with > unapproved equipment, or make and publish copies of the images of the marked > ballots, which could then be counted and analyzed offline by unapproved > equipment. That would serve as a canary in the coal mine. It would be > cheap enough to do at every election, every time. That would be the quality > control check, which would provide real data for an informed decision on > when it's worthwhile to pay the fee for an official recount. If all the information is 100% public, available to everyone on-line, in it's original form or as close as possible (ie, paper ballot photos), then no one has to request a recount... paranoid people the world over will just do it. For every election. Automatically. --tim _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
