The mounting irregularities of closed-source proprietary e-voting systems clearly show the need for a new approach to securing elections in the U.S. -- one centered on the use of open source technologies, writes Paul Venezia. 'It's time for us to make good on the promise of open elections and open our e-voting systems as well,' Venezia writes, outlining the technical blueprint for a cheap, secure, open source e-voting system. The call for open voting systems has grown louder as of late, with several projects, such as Pvote and the Open Voting Consortium, demonstrating how the voting booth could benefit from open source code. Such systems are already securing elections in Australia and Brazil.
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Member since:2008-06-07
Member since:2005-12-15
Member since:2007-04-23
What you want is a hybrid system..
One that presents you with a screen, you cast your vote on the screen, the computer keeps a tally (quick count) and prints you a paper vote and a receipt both containing cryptographic hashes but no other identifying information...
You place the paper vote in a ballot box and keep the receipt.
Votes can be counted manually to verify the electronic count is correct, and you can verify your receipt against a database of votes to ensure your vote was counted correctly, making any problems easier to detect and prove... And if there are significant discrepancies the election should be declared void and redone.
Member since:2006-01-22
Why e-banking can be more or less secure? Because of authentication! You check the fingerprint of the banks HTTPS certificate and the bank checks your login data and couple all your transactions to *your* account.
However, in voting you do not want this! You want your votes to by anonymous! Security in computer systems rely on things like authentication (besides encryption) etc. But you cannot use those things with e-voting.
Member since:
2005-12-15
I really am struggling to understand this whole notion that there's no possible way for it to be secure.
Why not apply the same logic to e-commerce, e-banking, EFTPOS, ATMs and so on? Heck, they even use wireless.
When there's a will there's a way and there also has to be a balance between cost and benefit.
Innovation, creation and the will to explore and move forward is what puts us humans ahead of all other species on earth. There IS a way, probably several, to have secure, reliable and auditable e-voting.. it's just not thought of yet.