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US's First Internet Votes To Be Cast This Friday
longacre writes "If you thought online voting in America was a distant pipe dream (nightmare?), think again: the nation's first Internet-based voting system goes online this Friday, just days after the release of the Damning Report On Sequoia E-Voting Machine Security we discussed yesterday. In the first real world run of the Okaloosa Distance Ballot Piloting (ODBP) test program, election officials from Okaloosa County, Florida have set up kiosks in Germany, the UK and Japan where 600-700 absentee voters — mostly military personnel — are expected to cast ballots. Security experts still have many questions, of course, particularly on the potential for interception of voting data while it travels across oceans (via 'secure VPN'), the security of the kiosks ('hardened laptops' with no hard drives and other sensitive components disabled) and the security of the three data centers (one of which is itself housed overseas, in Barcelona, Spain), not to mention the fact that Florida doesn't exactly have a stellar record when it comes to vote counting. Florida's Dept. of State also has a fairly detailed outline of ODBP's components and processes [PDF]."
Using encryption, exactly what you asked for can be done.
I suggest you start your reading by looking at blind signatures.
Of course, it won't be implemented correctly, but e-voting is mathematically possible.
I think you misinterpret what the intention is. While voting is cast back to the US via the internet, these are still electronic voting machines in a designated location for military serving overseas to vote at. Registration is still subject to the same checking procedure and you can't just do this from home. What the worry is deals with the addition to internet encryption / security and not registration checks.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
More specifically:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems