Scientists question electronic voting

[(Mr) Lyn R. Kennedy]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 02:55:19PM -0500, Barney Wolff wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 12:45:41PM -0600, (Mr) Lyn R. Kennedy wrote:
> > 
> > Seems there is still a problem unless each eligible voter brings a smart-
> > card, warm finger, eyeball, etc.
> 
> This is a perfect example of what I'm complaining about:  You're holding
> electronic voting to a much higher standard than you are paper ballots.

If it's not a higher standard then it violates the "If it aint broke, don't
fixit" rule. But I'm concerned about "KISS" and "the right tool for the
job" more than anything.

 
> Perfect is the enemy of better.  We do have to take care that electronic
> voting does not introduce new and catastrophic vulnerabilities.  Other
> than that, it merely has to be better (and no more expensive) than the
> best existing systems.

Unfortunately, there is a trend toward more complex systems as a solution
to everything. Families of firefighters who died in the WTC collapse would
probably have been happier if they had the old low-tech radios from 20
years ago rather than whiz-bang gadgetry that failed. There was no plan
to fall back on since politicians believed the salesman who told them it
wouldn't fail. And the proposed fix is more complexity rather than the
right tools for the job.

This is what happened in the Florida elections as well. "Upgrading" the
voting systems was the problem, not the solution. More complex machines
add to the number of failure modes. I'm in favor of using modern
technology. But I don't want to move to electronic systems just to make
some salesman happy.

Modern technology and public-key cryptography seems to offer some real
advantages to verifying eligibility, one-person-one-vote, and vote-
whever-you-are but many such issues are not even addressed. Passed over
in favor of making money for voting machine companies.


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