Information Technology and Voting

ChelleChelle writes, "In an interview in ACM Queue, Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann attempt to answer the question: Does technology help or hinder election integrity?" From the article: "Work in this area is as politically loaded as work on evolution or stem cells. Merely claiming that research into election integrity is needed is seen by many politicians as challenging the legitimacy of their elections... One of the problems in public discussions of voting-system integrity is that the different participants tend to point to different threats. Election-system vendors and election officials generally focus on effective defense against outside attackers, usually characterized as hackers. Meanwhile, many public interest groups have focused on the possibility of election officials corrupting the results."

Comments

Can't beat paper votes and scrutineers.

[ribuck]

Technology hinders election integrity. How can you beat the integrity of a paper vote system, where the ballots are removed from sealed ballot boxes and counted immediately at the close of polling, with scrutineers from each party watching? There's very little scope for mischief.

Why bother bringing technology into the voting system? Polls are infrequent, so there's no real cost benefit to automation. It's not like voting is being done every day and needs to be automated.

Lack of speed - disenfranchised voters

[SpaceLifeForm]

The DRE machines are actually slowing down the voting
process, leading to long lines, with waits in the hours.

Many people can't wait that long and have to go to work.

Perception

[EmbeddedJanitor]

What they want is perceived hacker-proofness. Joe Sixpack can easily think of ways in which a paper ballot could go wrong (stuffing, losing papers, miscounts), but cannot think of easy ways to hack an electronic system. Therefore to Joe Sixpack, the electronic systemm seems more secure.

Remember in politics truth is putty.