Computer Scientists Rally for Reliable Voting System

Kim Alexander writes "Silicon Valley computer scientists, led by Stanford professor David Dill are asking Santa Clara county to purchase a new computerized voting system only if it provides a voter verified paper trail. Their concerns are based on the lack of adequate testing of these voting systems, and the fact that the software is closed-source and proprietary. Requiring a voter-verified paper trail will mitigate many of these problems. Dill's 'Resolution on Electronic Voting' has been endorsed by prominent computer scientists from all over the country, including Ron Rivest. Counties all over California and the US are going through a similar process. Patriotic nerds who want to do something to help protect our fundamental right to vote with confidence that our votes will be counted can help by contacting their state and local reps, writing letters to supervisors and getting informed!"

Comments

Yeah a New voting system is good..

[Hott of the World]

...but who's gonna teach Florida how to use them?

Re:Privacy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can only be possible with a sort of one-way encryption of a code, such as an md5sum. I'd hate to be able to have a vote traced back to me.

I think we know who voted for Bush!

Re:If there so worried the voting soft. is closed

[Waffle Iron]

why not start and open source project?

I can see the retirees in Florida now as they try to enter their vote:

[voter@miami-booth-323]$ vote -T Republican -x senate:Reno, mayor:Phillips -p 32:yes, 47:no
vote: Invalid paramters.
[voter@miami-booth-323]$ vote --help
Vote for candidates.
USAGE:
vote [-kKeiAvcIJx [-T party] [[-xkjJT] office:(name|party) [,...]] | [-qET] propnum:(yes|no) [,...] ] ...
[voter@miami-booth-323]$ man vote
No manual entry for vote
[voter@miami-booth-323]$ apropos vote
vote: nothing appropriate
[voter@miami-booth-323]$ info vote
This is the top of the INFO tree
...
[voter@miami-booth-323]$ crap
bash: crap: command not found
[voter@miami-booth-323]$

Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope they give this task to a responsible, accountable organization like microsoft or adobe, and dont leave it up to a bunch of subversive america-bashing communists.

Open source system

[m00nun1t]

The problem with having a voting system based on open source code is we would end up with Cowboy Neal as President.

Re:Open source system

[Avedon]

How would that be inferior to what we have now?

KeepItSimpleStupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Open souce? Checksums? Backups? Redundancy? NONSENSE!

All we need is two things to ensure safe, accurate computerized voting.

1. Machines that produce a voter-verifiable audit record (paper ballot).

2. A law that says that anyone can call for a manual recount at any time, and if the electronic results are shown to be incorrect, everyone involved in building and installing the system will be shot. (If they're willing to risk our democracy, the should be willing to risk their lives. Conversely, if they're not willing to bet their lives on it, why should we risk our right to vote?)