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.

Comments

Re:With All due respect...

[stratjakt]

Then how do you know that the code you audited is the code on the box?

The 'conspiracy theorists' won't believe anything. They won't believe man landed on the moon, they believe the WTC was downed by the American military. They wouldn't believe the code made public was the code used.

There are just people you can't convince of anything, the way I see it there's no point in trying to appease them in the first place.

Myself, I'd wonder if some zealot for sticking in a Gore*=Gore+1 instead of Gore=Gore+1. Opening the code to independent review from all parties would be good enough. I believe most 'bad things' are the result of at most a handful of nutballs with an agenda, that would be the most likely scenario.

Michael isn't. But, it seems he'd be satisfied so long as Tux was there in the corner of the screen to reassure him. To him, corporations like Microsoft are the boogeyman.

The next rung on the nut-job ladder wouldn't be convinced no matter what happens. His logic would make him suspiscious by the very action of opening the process to his review.

We shouldn't be wasting effort trying to appease the lunatic fringe.