Electronic Voting (was: Re: [lug] Warning about RTENet.com)

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Mon, Dec 04, 2000 at 04:14:44PM -0700, Nate Duehr wrote:
>I think a discussion of how to do national voting systems on Linux would
>be interesting, but not probably very realistic!  (Heh...)

There are a number of folks worried that the current election problems will
cause people to try to move towards a computerized voting system.  The
problem is that it often eliminates the ability to do a manual recount.
The reason manual recounts are done is because automatic systems have
problems.  In Florida, a manual recount is dictated by law if the
election is closer than a certain amount because things like ballot
design, voting and counter operation, etc can cause problems that a
human inspection can decide.

Ideally a manual recount involves the represenatives of those who are
involved in the close election.  They would (in this case) both be shown
the ballot, and would agree on an interpretation of it, or would put it
in a pile for later pursual as "undecided".

How can you ensure such a review in the case of an electronic voting
system?  Even strong crypto can't necessarily ensure the voter's intentions
were honored (especially when done anonymously).  Sure, you may be able to
prevent modification in-transit, but what if somone at the software vendor
has slipped in some code which 10% of the time randomly re-orders the the
check-box IDs if they contain "republican" or "democrat" and it's the second
tuesday after whatever on the appropriate year?

It would be nearly impossible to track down.  Especially with closed-source
software.

So does Linux save the day?  Probably not...  The problem just goes from
impossible to nearly impossible.

The best solution I've heard so far is that the act of computer voting
would be done at a polling place, and would produce a paper copy of the
voters selections, which they would then review and confirm.  Then you
drop the paper record into a tamper-proof container.

You still have the ability to audit the vote then.  The real win comes in
when you don't have to pay a licensing fee to Microsoft for all these
"voting machines" out in the field.  Especially when they're used one day
every 4 years.  Perhaps one could make a single-floppy voting system that
would allow for doing this on commodity PCs?

Sean
-- 
 When the law supports you, pound the law.  When the facts support you, pound
 the facts.  If neither, pound the table.  Bush supporters are rioting...
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python