Re:Doppler shifting radio waves?
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Saving Huygens
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· Score: 1
Well, consider this: You can hear the doppler shift quite fine when the much-quoted ambulance speeds by, even though most ambulances I've seen don't make anything close to Mach 1.
...why anyone would want to use all this e-voting. You don't need touchscreen voting machines. You don't need machines that punch holes into cards for you. There is a simple, effective and rather secure voting system that has been successfully used for decades. Just use a paper ballot with a list of names/parties, a circle next to each name and tell people to check one of the circles with a pen.
In a process as important as an election, a system must be used that anyone can understand. The results must be 100% verifiable.
I don't think it's very useful to discuss whether voting machines should be open source or closed source. Such systems can only be understood be a relatively small (compared to the whole population) number of people. Of the people that can understand it, only a small percentage will actually investigate the systems in depth. In the end, we will have to trust a handfull of experts that the machines work the way we expect them to. Some of these experts will work for institutions with their own political agendas. Even those that are truly independent will make mistakes, miss some bugs. Furthermore, they will only be able to inspect a few systems, they can never verify that every single one of thousands of voting machines across the country is working correctly.
We have seen so many machines getting hacked in the last years, open source or not, and sooner or later it WILL happen to voting machines.
Some comments here suggest to add paper trails by giving the voter a printout of his ballot which he can verify. Sure, this is an improvement over pure electronic voting, but why not use paper in the first place? I wouldn't even trust scanners. All counting should be done by hand.
I have been a volunteer at a few elections here in Germany and I think the system we used is very secure.
When the voter comes to the voting center he receives his paper ballot. The ballots that are given out are counted. The voter votes and puts his ballot in the ballot box. His name is checked on the voter list, the checked names on the list are counted.
In the end of the day all ballots in the box are counted. The number has to agree with the number of checked names on the list and the number of ballots given out. The ballots are sorted, one pile for each party/candidate, each pile is counted independently by at least two volunteers. Of course all counts have to add up to the total number of votes. All in all, it is highly unlikely that any counting mistakes will go unnoticed. In the end, all ballots are put into a sealed box and sent to a central state authority that can check the results again.
IIRC the whole counting process is public, so you can go to your voting center and see your vote being counted (I haven't seen anybody doing that though).
I think this process is hard to manipulate, even if all volunteers in a voting center worked together they could only change a few thousand votes and such foul play could easily be discovered.
Sure, the counting takes a few hours, but isn't it worth the wait?
From a technical viewpoint I find voting machines and the different ideas to make the process secure very interesting, but I don't ever want to trust them with my vote.
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Well, consider this: You can hear the doppler shift quite fine when the much-quoted ambulance speeds by, even though most ambulances I've seen don't make anything close to Mach 1.
...why anyone would want to use all this e-voting. You don't need touchscreen voting machines. You don't need machines that punch holes into cards for you. There is a simple, effective and rather secure voting system that has been successfully used for decades. Just use a paper ballot with a list of names/parties, a circle next to each name and tell people to check one of the circles with a pen.
In a process as important as an election, a system must be used that anyone can understand. The results must be 100% verifiable.
I don't think it's very useful to discuss whether voting machines should be open source or closed source. Such systems can only be understood be a relatively small (compared to the whole population) number of people. Of the people that can understand it, only a small percentage will actually investigate the systems in depth. In the end, we will have to trust a handfull of experts that the machines work the way we expect them to. Some of these experts will work for institutions with their own political agendas. Even those that are truly independent will make mistakes, miss some bugs. Furthermore, they will only be able to inspect a few systems, they can never verify that every single one of thousands of voting machines across the country is working correctly.
We have seen so many machines getting hacked in the last years, open source or not, and sooner or later it WILL happen to voting machines.
Some comments here suggest to add paper trails by giving the voter a printout of his ballot which he can verify. Sure, this is an improvement over pure electronic voting, but why not use paper in the first place? I wouldn't even trust scanners. All counting should be done by hand.
I have been a volunteer at a few elections here in Germany and I think the system we used is very secure.
When the voter comes to the voting center he receives his paper ballot. The ballots that are given out are counted. The voter votes and puts his ballot in the ballot box. His name is checked on the voter list, the checked names on the list are counted.
In the end of the day all ballots in the box are counted. The number has to agree with the number of checked names on the list and the number of ballots given out. The ballots are sorted, one pile for each party/candidate, each pile is counted independently by at least two volunteers. Of course all counts have to add up to the total number of votes. All in all, it is highly unlikely that any counting mistakes will go unnoticed. In the end, all ballots are put into a sealed box and sent to a central state authority that can check the results again.
IIRC the whole counting process is public, so you can go to your voting center and see your vote being counted (I haven't seen anybody doing that though).
I think this process is hard to manipulate, even if all volunteers in a voting center worked together they could only change a few thousand votes and such foul play could easily be discovered.
Sure, the counting takes a few hours, but isn't it worth the wait?
From a technical viewpoint I find voting machines and the different ideas to make the process secure very interesting, but I don't ever want to trust them with my vote.