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Electronic Voting's Fundamental Flaws
phil reed writes "Given the latest fiasco in Florida's continuing attempts to implement a decent voting system, I thought it would be appropriate to alert Slashdot readers to the work of Dr. Rebecca Mercuri. She's been studying voting systems for many years, and has developed well-considered positions on what makes a good electronic voting system (and what makes a bad one). Her comments on the Florida 2002 election can be found in the current Risks Digest. And, if you think that creating a computer-based voting system is easy, she provides a suggested list of questions that should be answered by any developer." Mercuri's statement in Risks is well worth reading. With all due respect, she is wrong in some respects: it is possible to create a fully-verified electronic system. Start with completely open code and thoroughly examined hardware, create an audited system for installing the code on the hardware, and make it tamper-evident so that you know the same code is still there when the machine reaches the voting booths. Bootable, hologrammed, serial-numbered CD-ROMs with individual private keys would do the trick. Mercuri is thinking in terms of vendors selling proprietary "solutions", where she's absolutely right: there's no way to verify that what people punch in is what is actually recorded.
And don't blame Jeb for the problems, the asshole democratic voting nazi leader down there denied his help.
Everyone is first to point fingers at Bush, but notice that 99.9% of the problems happened in the same 3 strongly liberal counties?
Poll workers not showing up on time? Not knowing how to boot up the machines? Yeah, that sounds like sabotage.
There is a obviously a lack of voting system knowledge with the people people that are running the polls. Mind you they are most older than my grandmother (poll workers and voters alike).
Did it ever occur to you that we might just be dealing with stupid people?
I think we might have to print pictures of the people and give the old folks a crayon and have them circle the person they want to elect.