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."

Comments

Dichotomy of Voting

[mfh]

There is a distinct dichotomy between the way voting should be handled, and the reality of the situation. Voting should be handled by the elderly ladies, with all their honesty and good faith, yet the gravity of the situation is that these ladies have become obsolete, due to the fact that they can easily be fooled now by those with a great deal of technological prowess. Sadly, these bastions of hope can't possibly keep up with the weasels who abuse power.

We need to utilize the honesty from these wonderful proctors, and harness that in whatever system of voting is brought forward. We need an auditing system that is open to the public, so that the votes can be quickly check-sum'd and factored by poll. Our votes should be accessible online so that we can check to make sure our vote has not been changed by wrong-doers.

The Future: bright, beautiful, and not here yet.

[LithiumX]

While electronic voting may be the way of the future, I'm a lot more inclined to be conservative about the entire process. We're in far too great a rush to revolutionize a system that has always had problems, and always will (in one form or another).
The recent near-tie's and questionable results are more a matter of our own political divisiveness and extreme political stances.
That, and a publicly-audited voting system dashes all my hopes of winning the 2012 elections by underhanded means.

Pioneers? Not really.

[bartwol]

It strikes me as odd that these people would be awarded and celebrated as "pioneers." Rather than act as creaters, they serve as opposers to those who create. Now, I'm not trying to suggest that their criticism is invalid, nor that they play a less than a valuable role. But let us not celebrate these people as models of human potential; it is far easier to play the tear-it-down role than it is to play the build-it-up role. A world lead by the critics, however valid their reasoning, could only find purpose at the expense of true pioneers.

<bart

Unfortunately...

[stienman]

Unfortunately the ceremony was marred by an apparent 'wardrobe malfuntion' in the Diebold voting system during the final tally. During the brief time the code was naked many were shocked and offended by what they saw. One sobbing professor commented, "I took my students to see an innocent american tradition, only to have to explain to them afterwards what an 'access database' was, and how easy it was to change their votes. I'm quite certian the incident scarred them."

Diebold denied having planned this event, while the EFF solemnly vowed to prohibit Diebold from hosting any future votes. Google indicated that this was the most replayed cache during the ceremony.

-Adam