[EM] Open Voting Consortium for e-voting?

[Ernest Prabhakar]

On Apr 16, 2004, at 2:12 PM, Ken Johnson wrote:

>
>> 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

 From my perspective, what would be most useful for research is 
-aggregate-  data across the entire electorate broken down by contest.  
  For plurality, that's pretty much what we get already, so its not all 
that interesting.  For ranked-order ballots, its a lot more 
information, but still it should be pretty straightforward to compile 
and release.

If broken down by contest, that should avoid the correlation concerns. 
Would that work for you?

-- Ernie P.

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