Slashdot Mirror
EFF Announces 2004 Pioneer Award Winners
Christopher Soghoian writes "In an announcement earlier this week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has revealed the winners of the Thirteenth Annual Pioneer Awards.
Focusing on the area of electronic voting security and accountability, they have highlighted the work of Kim Alexander, the president of the California Voter Foundation, David Dill, a Stanford Professor and founder of VerifiedVoting.org, and Avi Rubin, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who co-authored the highly publicized Diebold report of 2003."
More power to 'em. Individuals like these will be the people our grandchildren study (I hope!).
Skivvy Niner? Email me!
HEY! Look left just ONE MORE TIME!
"Our votes should be accessible online so that we can check to make sure our vote has not been changed by wrong-doers"
People will almost invariably respond to this with "But this opens the potential for people to abuse those with different votes than theirs". However, I've been in agreement with you for quite a while anyway. Those that are afraid to stand up for their vote simply wouldn't get one. Unfortunate, but I think it has a chance at making people appreciate their vote MORE rather than less.
It's good to see those who work heard to protect our freedoms receiving proper recognition. With the various problems closed source electronic voting has had we can cheer on those who are fighting for us.
:(){
Just grateful that someone, anyone, is trying to defend the rights of the individual nowadays. Doesn't seem to be in vouge anymore.
Thank you, EFF!
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
This could be abused to death, by major employers who could "strongly encourage" their employees to vote for the pro-big-business candidate. So far, we've been safe from such abuse because there has been no way to verify whether any particular person voted for the "right" candidate; as soon as that changes, expect problems.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
It is possible to preserve anonymity and have votes accessible online.
Have the voting machine print you a receipt with a unique ID on it.If you are so inclined, you can look up the UID on the net and ensure your vote was tallied correctly.
If you are concerned about your privacy, simply leave your receipt in the polling station and your vote is untraceable.
And there you have it - a simple, user auditable system for e-voting that preserves privacy.
<bart
The problem with this is that the thugs can simply threaten to beat you in one of two cases:
1) You didn't get a receipt or
2) Your voting didn't please them
By allowing people the opportunity to check on themselves, you are also allowing others to check on them.
The only way to provide this kind of check and balance is to allow people to observe their paper ballot inside the voting place, but not allow them to leave with it.
This requires that the voting machines and operators are secure.
But then, this has always been the case. We've always relied on the operators and the machines we've used. This isn't as new a problem as you might think. The only reason people are up in arms is that the machine hides so much of the process that it's difficult, if not impossible, to verify. This is why so many people are pushing for voter receipts that the voter does not leave with. The receipts are collected, and if an audit is needed then the receipts are what gets counted since the voter ostensibly checked the receipt after voting.
The problem with this is that you get very large receipts since they have to be human readable.
But these are not insurmountable problems, and I'm quite certian that after another 12 years we'll be happy with our machines and the process. As long as we can audit the machines, any and all offenses can be punished accordingly when caught, just as they are now.
Besides, voting was never meant to be fool-proof. It's simply the best way that is currently practical to run a republic. Eventually this will change.
-Adam
And how do you know the machine doesn't store your real vote for diisplay but doesn't actually count it?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
What's wrong with a paper ballot system that can be audited by the old ladies that you speak of? Place an "X" next to the candidates you wish to vote for. If we really must have e-voting then have it print a stinking paper ballot that is dropped into a drop-box. Don't even keep a running total on the PC -- count the damn paper ballots.
Failing that what's wrong with the old style mechanical voting machines (we still use them in my district -- I just got a huge training manual on them because I volunteered to be an elections inspector this year)? Pull a lever for your candidate and it increments a counter. Completely mechanical -- no electric or software needed. A fairly complex machine but it's certainly more resistant to tampering then software (and don't give me a lecture about OSS being the solution -- unless John Q. Public has root access to the e-Voting machine how do you know that OSS is really running on it?) -- and it's at least as reliable.
With the setup that my state has (again this is coming out of the handbooks that I got from my local Board of Elections after volunteering) you have two election inspectors from both major parties and observers from any interested candidate that can watch the voting and auditing process -- that's as tamper proof as it's going to get. And the old ladies can understand it! We don't need to be held hostage by a friggen company whose CEO has stated that "He will deliver Ohio's electoral votes to the President". Where's the damn outrage from the general public?
Our votes should be accessible online so that we can check to make sure our vote has not been changed by wrong-doers.
Doesn't that defeat the point of anonymous voting?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Here's how you do it: first off, electronic voting software must be open source, and furthermore it must be inspected by qualified computer security experts. The software developers and security inspectors would be paid for their work, of course, but they would need to either assign their copyright to the state or at least assign unlimited distribution rights to the state.
Then, when the voter votes, a printout of that vote is produced, and the voter is asked by the machine to confirm that he or she has inspected the paper record and agrees that it matches the voter's intent. In the security inspection, particular attention is paid to ensuring that the printout will match the submitted vote. Nevertheless, the paper record is then deposited in a locked box, watched over by experienced little old ladies, one per political party per polling station the way things are done today. For a randomly selected sample of polling stations, all the paper ballots are counted and compared to the electronically reported figure. In very close races, all of the paper records can be counted. To make recounts more efficient, the paper printouts can be designed to be optically readable and machine counted if need be.
"But that will be expensive", some will whine. Big deal: assuring that the voters' will is respected is the #1 priority in a democratic society.