List: Ed Gerck's recent posting re: security by endorsement made me think about the fact that the accuracy of the current voting systems essentially represents "accuracy by endorsement." For example. Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, whenever anyone asked a vendor for prove that their system was 100% (or 99.99%) accurate, the response was usually something to the effect that: My equipment is used in X number of states and X number of counties. They've had no problems. Here's the phone number of the people there whom you may call. In other words, there was little independent, scientific data to substantiate the claims made about the accuracy of a voting system. I don't see this process of endorsement as being at all useful for Internet voting systems. Quite the opposite. I see open peer review, open protocols, open source code, and lots and lots of public testing as some of the ways to substantiate any claims made by anyone involved in designing an Internet voting system. Hopefully, after the many eyes of the world that have been focused on Florida, it will be easier to see the benefits of the many eyes that can make bugs shallow. Comments? Eva Waskell
