[EM] March 29 Newsweek article on verifiable voting

[Adam Tarr]

Dave Ketchum wrote:

>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.

This dichotomy is directly addressed by David Chaum in "Secret-Ballot Receipts:
True Voter-Verifiable Elections" 
(http://www.voterverifiable.com/article.pdf).  The Article is very 
accessible and the idea is very well thought out; I recommend everybody who 
is concerned with these issues take a look at it.

>     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.

Right, although it's not extremely hard to check in this system.  As the 
author points out, if even a small number of people check, then any vote 
tampering is likely to be noticed.

-Adam