Missing two thirds of the equation.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| jdixon Sep 28, 2008 11:42 AM EDT |
While good, his article misses the fact that you also need open hardware and an auditable paper trail. Open source by itself is not a complete solution. The entire system must be open. |
| jezuch Sep 28, 2008 3:02 PM EDT |
When at the university, I learned about at least one electronic voting algorithm that *seemed* to not require any of these two (not that having them is a bad thing). Each voter would get a code, with which they could verify that their vote was tallied correctly on a page *publicly* listing all these codes. This way it was fully anonymous, verifiable by all voters and everyone could sum up the scores. And it wasn't that complex, too... But I ain't security expert so I won't say if it's really secure :) In all this fuss with voting machines it looks to me like the main failure of producers of those machines is that they think it's just a matter of incrementing counters when a button is pushed. I can only cringe at that thought and pray it ain't so. |
| hkwint Sep 28, 2008 3:22 PM EDT |
Quoting:While good, his article misses the fact that you also need open hardware and a auditable paper trail. That's what they thought in my country after the proprietary-voting machines debacle, so they went searching. Finally, after a very long search, they found the solution. It's very open, and dubbed: "Red pencil and paper". It is really brilliant: The "hardware" is open (well, in fact during the elections the ballot boxes are closed), there is an auditable paper trail and there is no software needed, meaning no software can be closed. Procedures are open of course, and it even seems this system is currently not covered by patents/copyright meaning no copyright/patent holder can exert control over the democratic process. Moreover, they calculated this system is cheaper than using the old proprietary voting machines. Wow, what a great insight! |
| jdixon Sep 28, 2008 4:01 PM EDT |
> It's very open, and dubbed: "Red pencil and paper". Which is exactly the same one we used (with black pens, admittedly) until last election. Then the "experts" decreed that we must use electronic machines. :( Sometimes the old ways really are the best ways. |
| jdixon Sep 28, 2008 4:05 PM EDT |
> ...they could verify that their vote was tallied correctly on a page *publicly* listing all these codes. If the codes are made public then it's not really a secret ballot. With a public listing, It's fairly easy for those voting one way to determine who must have voted the other. That's not really a good trade-off. |
| Sander_Marechal Sep 28, 2008 4:21 PM EDT |
Quoting: If the codes are made public then it's not really a secret ballot. With a public listing, It's fairly easy for those voting one way to determine who must have voted the other. That's not really a good trade-off. How on earth are you going to do that? Perhaps if the listing was only for a really small area with only a few people, but if the listing contains many people (like the entire US) it's impossible to find out. They could simply create a website with all the codes on them, and offer free access to that website in certain government offices for people who can't go online. |
| jezuch Sep 28, 2008 4:27 PM EDT |
It occured to me that I was stretching things a bit with this claim of lack of need of trusted hardware. Sorry :) Pen-and-pencil voting is fine for me and I don't advocate changing it, BTW. Quoting:If the codes are made public then it's not really a secret ballot. With a public listing, It's fairly easy for those voting one way to determine who must have voted the other. That's not really a good trade-off. Well, I'd like to see 10 million voters revealing their votes just to nail the other 10 million voters... [it's my country's scale] This may be a hole, but probably it's the best we can get. Debian does this way, BTW (see for example http://www.debian.org/vote/2008/vote_001_tally.txt). |
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