[extropy-chat] [psl at acm.org: ACTION ALERT: Blackwell purgedOhio Voter Rolls Oct 1st.- Vote Early!]

spike spike66 at comcast.net
Fri Oct 20 16:30:03 UTC 2006


Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] [psl at acm.org: ACTION ALERT: Blackwell purgedOhio
Voter Rolls Oct 1st.- Vote Early!]



The most remarkable aspect of the notion of paperless voting is not how easy
it would be to hack.  Most of us realize that any paperless system could be
theoretically hacked.  The thing that I find much more remarkable is how
very easy it would be to design a system that would be verifiable.  How many
ways can you imagine?  Consider:

Voting place, barrel of unique random numbered tickets, you choose one.
They give you the magnetic card that records your vote, you insert your
card, enter your number off the ticket, no one knows who got what number so
the vote is secret, you do the touch-screen thing, machine creates a receipt
with a printed bar code registering your choices, not human readable so you
still maintain secrecy.  The day after the elections, a website with an
enormous excel spreadsheet, records of every ticket number with how that
ticket voted, still completely secret if you kept your ticket number to
yourself.  You verify the vote is recorded the way you thought you voted.
If not, go to the news people with your ticket and your voting receipt.
Then see if all the erroneous votes are for the same guy or proposition.

Evolution damn, how easy is this?  This would be cheap and easy, and would
establish actual credibility of a paperless election.  It would be more
credible than the old punchcard elections too.

spike



   





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