[E-voting] Dill, Schneier and Simons on paperless e-voting danger

[Adrian Colley]

The August (v46n8) edition of Communications of the ACM has an article
by David L. Dill, Bruce Schneier and Barbara Simons which concisely
spells out the dangers of e-voting without a VVAT.  It's US-centric,
but applies just as well to Ireland's problem.  I recommend it for
showing to your local TD/Cllr/journo.

Voting and Technology: Who Gets to Count Your Vote?
<URL:http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/859670.859692>

Some decent non-copyright-infringing extracts:

``Almost all the DREs currently certified by state and local agencies
have an "audit gap" between the voter's finger and the electronic or
magnetic medium on which the votes are recorded.''

``...election officers are powerless to prevent accidental or deliberate
errors in the recording of votes.''

``This is an unacceptable way to run a democracy.''

``The problem with these arguments [that e-voting machines are
infallible] is that it's impossible without some very special hardware
(and maybe even with it) to make computers sufficiently reliable and
secure...''

``With large numbers of DREs in use, a small group or even a single
individual at a voting machine manufacturer could alter software later
installed on tens or hundreds of thousands of machines.''

``Amazingly, the elimination of paper ballots is considered a major
advantage by some, [...].  The accompanying security risks are ignored,
or even denied, by people who don't understand the underlying
technology...''

``It's important that voters trust the machines and _know_ they are
accurate.  Democracy should not depend on blind faith.''

``Election machines must be treated like safety- and mission-critical
systems: fault tolerant, redundant, carefully analyzed code.  And they
need to close the audit gap with paper ballots.''

The authors also point out:
 + that several DRE vendors have already agreed to retrofit VVAT to
   their machines; and
 + that over 900 computing professionals have signed the "Resolution on
   Electronic Voting" petition which calls for VVAT.
   <URL:http://verify.stanford.edu/EVOTE/statement.html>

 --Adrian.

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