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Maryland Town Tests New Cryptographic Voting System

Posted by samzenpus on from the super-safe-voting dept.

ceswiedler writes "In Tuesday's election voters in Takoma Park, MD used a new cryptographic voting system designed by David Chaum with researchers from several universities including MIT and the University of Maryland. Voters use a special ink to mark their ballots, which reveals three-digit codes which they can later check against a website to verify their vote was tallied. Additionally, anyone can download election data from a Subversion repository and verify the overall accuracy of the results without seeing the actual choices of any individual voter."

5 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. first vote! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    457

  2. Re:Interesting, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I know the Florida ballot count debacle wasn't all that long ago, but are we that concerned about votes not being counted?

    If we were concerned about people's votes not being counted would we be testing a Cryptic New Voting System? ... Oops sorry, Freudian misread.

  3. I think I know what the 3 letter code is... by ickeicke · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... obviously it is DRE (700), serial number 34491.

    Let's hope that this new system prevents premature revelation of election results...

    --
    Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
  4. Re:Very interesting stuff. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Ya, they should be using git anyway. Like gitmo is where you go if you tamper with the votes.

  5. Re:Great on paper - but in real life? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    This system assumes three things:

    • Everyone participates - voters have to validate their vote afterward to make sure it's still correct.
    • Everyone is perfect - people who incorrectly cast their vote will always suspect fraud, calling the entire election into question.
    • Everyone is sane - individual voters do not lie about about their vote to game the system, cast doubt on the election, etc.

    I voted the parent post down as a troll, but instead the Slashcode modded it up as "funny"...what the hell? I demand this site be taken down until the parent post is rated -1 Troll as it has been voted.