On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 12:21 PM, sbeam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The fact is, a hardcopy paper audit trail is a lot simpler and you don't need > a PhD in cryptology to understand it. And it might even be cheaper than a > digital solution.
The real-world physicality of paper is what makes it safe. To forge votes, or to destroy votes, requires the manipulation of physical objects. It's easy to do for a handful, but extremely difficult to do on a massive scale. Thus, the more power is at stake, the harder it is to rig the vote. With digital-only systems, a single flaw or backdoor can allow vote rigging on a massive scale, at very little expense. We barely trust digital systems to conduct routine economic transactions; to trust them with assigning political power is an incredibly bad idea. Even if everything was open source and done exactly right, I would still want a paper trail thanks very much. And by the way, the voting machines we use here in NYC are rumored to be corruptible... something about inserting a toothpick between the teeth of the gears of candidates that shouldn't win? We really have no idea what's happening when we pull that big lever. chris. _______________________________________________ New York PHP Community Talk Mailing List http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk NYPHPCon 2006 Presentations Online http://www.nyphpcon.com Show Your Participation in New York PHP http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php
