Scientists question electronic voting

[Ed Gerck]

Anton Stiglic wrote:

> -Well the whole process can be filmed, not necessarily photographed...
> It's difficult to counter the "attack".  In you screen example, you can
> photograph
> the vote and then immediately photograph the "thank you", if the photographs
> include the time in milliseconds, and the interval is short, you can be
> confident
> to some degree that the vote that was photographed was really the vote that
> was casted.
> You can have tamper resistant film/photograph devices and whatever you want,
> have the frames digitally signed and timestamped,
> but this is where I point out that you need to consider the value of the
> vote to
> estimate how far an extortionist would be willing to go.

The electronic process can be made much harder to circumvent by
allowing voters to cast any number of ballots but counting only the last
ballot cast. Since a voter could always cast another vote after the one that
was so carefully filmed, there would be no value for such film.

BTW, a similar process happens in proxy voting for shareholders meeting,
where voters can send their vote (called a "proxy") before the meeting
but can also go to the meeting and vote any way they please -- trumping
the original vote.

Much work needs to be done, and tested, to protect the integrity of
public elections. Even with all such precautions, if  the choices made by
a voter are disclosed (ie, not just the tally for all voters) then a voter
can be identified by using an unlikely pattern -- and the Mafia has,
reportedly, used this method in Italy to force (and enforce) voter
choices in an otherwise private ballot.

Cheers,
Ed Gerck


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