Can America Trust Electronic Voting?

A anonymous reader writes: "The Sacramento Bee wrote an excellent article about the issues surrounding electronic voting. It was written by the Yolo County clerk/recorder and a professor of law at UC Davis. They quote sources such as Peter G. Neumann and Diebold's president Walden O'Dell."

Comments

Some paranoia...

[zeux]

Maybe I'll be a little 'off-topic' but I would like to add some reflexion to this article.

E-Voting and its problems are a clear example of what is happening: we are giving to our computers and networks more and more 'power' over our own lives. This wouldn't be a problem if security was some exact science.

We still have big problems with computer security and while we didn't fix them yet (anyway can we really fix them ?) the overall 'value' of the data that goes through our networks is fast increasing.

This, I think, will be even worse in the near future because the software, systems and networks we use will be more and more complex and it will be harder and harder to maintain a good level of security on them.

You could argue that the problems exposed in the article are not related to security. I would say 'not yet'.

But something really interesting is said: "These machines leave no 'paper trail,' that is, no voter-verifiable record allowing a retrospective audit of the votes recorded as cast for each candidate or ballot proposition.".

Everything in these system is 'virtual'. It makes it easier to loose, to replicate (to steal) or to alter information. I'm quite afraid about that.

Maybe the E-Voting system is not connected to Internet, which increase security of course, but maybe one day it will...