[EM] March 29 Newsweek article on verifiable voting

[Jan Kok]

Dave,

I agree that ballot secrecy is important, in order to avoid the possibility
of vote buying or coersion.  The Newsweek article made that point as well,
and I believe all of the schemes presented in the article do provide that
secrecy.

I do think it's neat that the Votegrity scheme provides the ballot secrecy
but IN ADDITION allows every voter to verify that his or her votes were
counted correctly - something that can't be guaranteed with current voting
procedures and equipment.

Cheers,
- Jan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Ketchum" <davek at clarityconnect.com>
> On Sat, 3 Apr 2004 18:24:41 -0700 Jan Kok wrote:
>
> > The March 29, 2004 issue of Newsweek magazine has an article about
security
> > for electronic voting.  Among the proposals mentioned are
> >
> > Rebecca Mercuri's verified voting scheme, which requires that machines
print
> > a paper ballot with the voter's choices, that the voter can then check
for
> > accuracy;
> >
> > David Jefferson et al's "frogs", some sort of digital storage device
that
> > can be used as a ballot.  (It is not clear to me from the article how
that
> > enhances security);
> >
> > David Chaum's Votegrity scheme, which uses cryptographic methods to
maintain
> > ballot secrecy while also allowing voters to verify that their votes are
> > counted correctly (see www.votegrity.com);
> >
> > "A similar system [to Votegrity] sold by sftware vendor VoteHere" allows
> > voters to verify that their votes were correctly recorded using a
tracking
> > code.
> >
> >
> > It's great to see that voting security is getting some attention in the
> > popular press!  Activists might consider sending letters to Newsweek.
> >
>
> How about leaning on IMPORTANT topics:
>
> How well do these schemes attend to voter secrecy?
>       Without secrecy, voters can sell "voting right" to those willing to
> pay for such.
>       Without assurance that secrecy is being maintained, voters can
> PROPERLY fear that, if they dare to vote "wrong", this may be known and
> result in punishment.
>
> Voters NEED the right to inspect those boxes labeled "voting machines" to
> verify whether they properly let the voters indicate their desires and
> report proper counts at end of election.
>
>      BTW - the right should be enough to ensure compliance by most
vendors;
>
> average voter is unable to do such inspection but a group of voters could
>
> pay someone willing and able.
> > Cheers,
> > - Jan
>
> --
>   davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
>   Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
>             Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
>                   If you want peace, work for justice.
>
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