VeriSign and Secure Internet Voting

Bucky Katt writes "VeriSign announced Monday that it will provide key components of a system designed to let Americans abroad cast absentee votes over the Internet."

Comments

Electronic voting

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there such an obsession with electronic voting.

Yes, the algorithms for secure anonymous fraud-proof voting exist, but I don't think the implementations are up to the task yet - in particular, if they cannot be independently verified before, during and after the elections.

There's just too much potential for a fraud to justify dropping the good old pencil-in-the-number-of-your-candidate method.

Replace the Electoral College w/ Folger's Crystals

[sleight]

And, for our next trick, we absolutely won't replace the electoral college with internet voting. Even if it were secure, it would take the power out of the hands of the elite and give it to the people.

However, wouldn't it be nice if we (the US, if you can forgive my inclusive pronoun) were a democracy instead of a republic? If internet voting is good for the goose, then shouldn't it be good for the gander? We just need to replace those old and moldy voting booths with shiny new internet-enabled booths.

Of course, as a programmer, I'll believe the voting scheme is "secure" when monkeys fly out of my butt.

They count absentee ballots?

[SaXisT4LiF]

As I recall, none of the absentee ballots made any difference in the 2000 presidential election.

Someone must have thought, "Lets let absentee voters vote electronically, we're just going to throw out their votes anyway!"

Nothing lost, nothing gained.

actually an improvement

[pangian]

While I'm usually skeptical of Internet voting, I'm actually in favor of it in the limited case of American personnel overseas, because it is better than the current system. Presently, most absentee votes don't even get counted, unless the margin of victory is less than number of absentee ballots. While this is technically accurate and efficient, it kinda sucks to be one of those people who's vote is never even considered.

On the security side, I hope that VeriSign avoids Diebold's mistake (with electronic voting machines, which is different from Internet voting) and makes the source code and security procedures public for scrutiny.

Something is needed to get people to vote

[tobybuk]

In the UK I think the average voter turnout for the general elections is hovering around the 35% mark and falling.

This is a huge problem for a democracy IMHO. Considering we've fought 2 world wars for the right to determine who governs us, it's pathetic that a majority of people cannot be bothered to get off their arses and vote.

However, I have a confession. I'm one of the majority and ashamed of it. I always intend to vote, but when the time comes I always seem to have something important to do instead. If we had an easy electronic voting system then I for one would always cast my vote.

OTOH Do we really want to encourage EVERYONE to cast a vote? If there was no effort involved (like actually having to travel to vote) then would we be encouraging people with no real political views to vote 'just because they can' Maybe then the result of the election would be decided by the lazy jobless who had nothing better to do than vote?

Re:OMG

[Zeinfeld]

The problem here is who you trust. If hardware and software made by the same entity there's nothing to prevent corruption during couting.

Exactly, with Palladium any conspiracy would have to include Microsoft, the hardware manufacturers, the CA and the people administering the ballots.

It is one thing to have open source code review. That is great but actually irrelevant since my main concern is not that the source code offered for review would have a backdoor. My concern is that the code running on the machine might not be the code given for review.

With Palladium it is possible for an external process to determine that a specific version of a software code is running on a particular machine. That is exactly what I want in designing an internet supported voting scheme.

Incidentally I find it really interesting that everyone seems to assume from the start that any ballot tampering would be directed by the GOP.