[EM] Electronic Voting Bill of Rights?

[Gervase Lam]

> Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 00:24:57 -0500
> From: Dave Ketchum <davek at clarityconnect.com>
> To: David GLAUDE <dglaude at gmx.net>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Electronic Voting Bill of Rights?

>      Recording ONLY at the end was my assumption.
>      Each record of votes is required to contain votes in random order -
> enough to make it impossible to be sure which belongs to a particular
> voter. This requires temporary storage, in random order, on a hard disk
> or floppy or magnetic card ...

I think David means that recording at the end is not good enough.  It has 
to be recorded straight on to a write-once removeable medium.  Putting the 
data on to hard disk, for example, and then on to the removeable medium 
means introducing the "weak" link between the hard disk and removeable 
medium.

In addition to this, a hard disk is a re-writable medium.  Therefore, 
there could be problems.  Mind you, computer memory is a re-writeable 
medium too!

You've also got things called re-writable CDs.  There could be some 
confusion here.

But I think this is a relatively easy one to sort out.  The CD-Writer 
should be able to detect this type of thing, as long as the "markings" on 
blank Write-once CD that the CD-Writer reads is correct.

I am sure my understanding of what David is saying is wrong here.  So I'll 
let David speak for himself.

> It is too early in this game to be sure whether a CD has enough
> capacity.

On the contrary.  If anything, this is the more practical side.

A CD can contain about 650,000,000 bytes.  Assuming that 1 ballot takes 
100 bytes (characters, letters), what you get is the ability to put in 6.5 
million ballots on the CD.  Even assuming the worst of having 1000 bytes 
per ballot, 1/2 million ballots on a CD isn't shabby.

You mentioned gaps between the records earlier.  I forgot about this.

It depends on whether you do Disk-At-Once or Track-At-Once recording.  If 
you do Disk-At-Once (i.e. write all the ballots in one go), then what I 
said above would work.

Writing a ballot per track (Track-At-Once) is nowhere near practical.  The 
minimum length of a CD track is 600,000 bytes.  Also there is a maximum 
number of tracks, which is 99.  That translates to 99 ballots.  For the 
gory details, see <http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq02.html#S2-9>.

I don't know about DVD, but CD would obviously be cheaper.

> I do not know available reliability - even installing double
> sets of drives is among the design possibilities.

Good point.  Audio CDs have data redundancy.  This redundant data contains 
hashing data to "re-create" the sound so that you can't hear the 
difference.  I think I am right in saying this.  Anyway, this isn't good 
enough for ballots.

Nevertheless, I think there are equivalent algorithms that can fully 
re-create the data.  Though it may be easiest just to install the double 
drives.

> > 2) Now you also have to fight Cosmic ray

Speaking of outer space...

One of the things mentioned as a part of this discussion was the use of 
Open Source to allow the checking of the inner workings of the computer 
software that counted the votes.  I was told that NASA uses two 
independent teams of computer programmers in order to program the software 
that controls rockets, for example.

The two teams do not communicate with each other.  There is also a "head" 
team.  They draw up the specification of the software required.  For 
example, they may want software that interprets the data from the 
temperature sensors on the nose cone.  They may go even further than this 
and specify what the specifications of the functions/subroutines are.  (I 
can't remember whether the head team does the high or low level 
specification or both.)

If one team asks a question in order to clarify the specification etc... 
the other team are formally told what the question is.  Obviously, both 
teams get an answer from the head team.

The writing of the software is left to the two independent team of 
programmers.  The end products are two independent pieces of software that 
do the same thing.

The rockets are then "wired" so that it uses the data/output from both 
bits of software.  If the data/output from both are the same, then the 
rocket deems it is OK to use the data.  I don't remember what happens if 
the data/output are different from each other...

>      Has all the speed voting needs (but I do not know about a Z80
> controlling CD or DVD drives).

I remember a craze during the mid-1980s of the Domesday Project to mark 
900 years of the Domesday Book.  One half of the idea was to get all of 
the schools in the country to take photographs of their local area and 
write anything about it.  The data for the whole country was then stored 
on a 7 inch (I think) Video disc, which was accessed using a popular 1MHz 
8 bit computer via a SCSI cable.

If that could be done then, I think it could be done now.  However, 
because the hardware would be proprietary, it would cost money.

> > 3) Some screen technology might be better than other...
> > Otherwise you need to go for Tempest proof equipment that cost a lot.

Good grief...  Never thought of this.  I have basically agreed with David 
that paper ballots are the way to, if I have read the posts correctly.  
But now....

Thanks,
Gervase.