[EM] Open Voting Consortium for e-voting?

[Ken Johnson]

>From: Ernest Prabhakar <drernie at mac.com>
>Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 11:12:01 -0700
>...
>  
>
>>...  Is there any way other groups could  
>>get access to summaries (e..g, the pairwise matrix) or scrubbed subset  
>>of ballots, for research purposes.
>>    
>>
>Certainly precinct totals should be made available.  We haven't done  
>the threat analysis to determine whether or not individual ballots  
>should be made available.
>  
>
In my view, public disclosure of precinct totals should be construed as 
a potential violation of voter secrecy. If a high percentage of people 
in my precinct vote a particular way, one could draw a highly probable 
inference about how I voted based on the precinct totals. Politicians 
may show favoritism toward or bias against certain precincts based on 
their voting patterns, or may use the information for targeted political 
marketing campaigns.

Furthermore, public disclosure of ballots, even devoid of any voter or 
precinct identity information, could also be construed as a secrecy 
violation because the ballots could be used to determine correlations 
between different ballot issues. For example, if the election includes a 
ballot initiative for Electoral Reform, one could use the ballots to 
determine the political constituencies of Electoral Reform advocates. 
This kind of information might make some politicians less likely to 
support Electoral Reform.

Of course, the ballot information could be obtained by conventional 
polling methods (e.g., exit polling), but in this case the voters have 
the option of withholding or misrepresenting their views. From my 
perspective, the only kind of "research purpose" for which ballots can 
be legitimately used is to determine the election outcome. Ballots and 
precinct-level totals should only be available to election officials and 
auditors who are obligated to maintain such information in confidence.

Ken Johnson