Slashdot Mirror
Hackers, Public Differ Greatly On E-voting
cweditor writes "Sorry to be touting one of my own Computerworld stories, but I only covered it because I found it so interesting. The Ponemon Institute surveyed 2,933 members of the general public and then 100 DEFCON and Black Hat attendees to get their views on electronic voting. 'The degree of difference was startling,' said director Larry Ponemon. It was the biggest split between 'experts and the public he'd ever found. For example, 83% of the experts said e-voting is less or much less secure against election tampering than paper ballots, compared with just 19% of the general public."
It seems as if they blindly trust our gov't to protect them from voting fraud. It's my opinion that the voting booth is really (short of violence) the ONLY tool that the population has to control their government.
To trust the gov't to keep the vote safe is kind of like putting the fox to work gaurding the henhouse.
The right to a secure, private, verifiable vote is the very foundation our country was built on. It's a shame that more people don't take it seriously.
Visit the Open Voting Consortium" for more indepth thoughts and ideas on this topic.
This seems to be an example of how technology has been sold to us ("the public" in this story) as an always-win net gain.
New is better than old. Expensive is better than cheap. Big is better than small.
This attitude is dangerous. Our collective faith is being misplaced in science and technology - both of which are important, but not perfect.
Look at the graph in the article. The biggest fear of the voting public is "Declines in voter turnout because of fear or distrust of e-voting systems."
In other words, their greatest fear is that people will realize that e-voting is a recipe for fraud and will stay home. Their greatest fear is that people respond rationally to what I think most of us believe is the truth. That just astounds me.
My wife has been terribly excited by electronic voting because it promises to be accessible. She takes great offense that because she is blind she has to get assistance to vote under the current system.
It's taken a while, but I've finally convinced her that being able to "vote" is pointless if the "vote" is not counted or they system itself is fundamentally flawed.
It's interesting that the local newspaper, the Berkeley Daily Planet took the position that being opposed to electronic voting was a scheme to disenfranchise the disabled. It took a while, but following many insightful letters, they finally admitted that electronic voting as currently proposed in Alameda had the more serious potential to disenfranchise everyone!
As technical professionals it's important we become informed as possible on the subject. That way when your dad or neighbour ask about electronic voting you can explain the dangers and current issues. The more the general public learns about electronic voting, the better off we all will be. (and these survey numbers will be more favourable)
-- "Most people prefer a popular myth to an unpopular truth"
So the article says. But why on earth would they program it to make up numbers, instead of it saying "ERROR MACHINE WAS NOT RESET". Why would they program it to MAKE UP RESULTS if it knows it cannot display the correct ones? Not to me a conspiracy theorist, but this almost sounds like a coverup/excuse for bad programming...