voting

Major Variola (ret) mv at cdc.gov
Thu Apr 8 19:15:28 EDT 2004


At 11:16 PM 4/8/04 +0200, privacy.at Anonymous Remailer wrote:
>In the second place, it fails for elections with more than two parties
>running.  The casual reference above to representatives "on each
>side" betrays this error.  Poorly funded third parties cannot provide
>representatives as easily as the Republicans and Democrats.  We already

>know that the major parties fight to keep third party candidates off
>the ballots.  Can we expect them to be vigilant in making sure that
>Libertarian and Green votes are counted?

Your points about the weaknesses of adversarial observers are
stimulating,
valid points, but the Reps and Dems *can* count on those votes *not*
being moved
into their de facto adversary's (Dems, Reps, respectively) bin.  And
in practice the fringe votes usually don't matter.  (I vote Lib..)
Its not uncommon for elections to be upheld *even when votes are known
lost* if the margins are sufficient. (It happened in California last
election, human error plus tech.)

Ultimately the adversarial parties are the ones who have to check the
whole process, including any tech that gets used.  And that process
is open to the Libs, etc.

As to your other point, the clever protocols, Perry and other
KISS advocates have a very strong (albeit social) point.  Joe
Sixpack can understand *and test* levers or Hollerith cards
or their optical counterparts.  Good luck getting him to understand
number theory.  It would be better in many estimations to have
even coercible voting than to have "Trust Me" apply to electing a
government.
(Not that the govt will avoid using that phrase once elected :-)





---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com



More information about the cryptography mailing list