[E-voting] Minimum requirement to juge voting "technology"

[Michael McMahon]

Fergal Daly wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 12:34:01PM +0100, Michael McMahon wrote:
> 
>>which is why I said some kinds of e-voting might be beneficial here. Secure 
>>e-voting
>>systems which don't keep paper copies of the ballots would have a slight 
>>advantage
>>when it comes to organising this kind of thing.
> 
> 
> It's just unfortunate that a secure e-voting system which doesn't keep paper
> copies of the ballots is a theoretical impossibility (or have I've just
> misunderstood the last year of campaigning? :-)

It's certainly not a "theoretical impossibility", though I would agree that
a lot of people have difficulty accepting it (I'm talking about Chaums system).

Nobody has produced a single convincing argument against it. The issue of
whether sufficient people understand it is important. But I would argue
strongly that anyone who believes in *the scientific process* should
trust it, on the same basis that they trust any other scientific innovation
which they don't necessarily understand.

In essence this means, if one person comes up with a convincing flaw in
the theory then the system is a dead duck. But until that happens, it should
be trusted. Many eminent experts have endorsed
it (eg. David Dill). Others like Rebecca Mercuri are skeptical, but still
have not found a flaw. It's also well within the capabilities of everyone
to understand it, at some level.

I would go further and argue that it's "theoretically" a much better system
than paper VVAT. But I understand that's heresy, and puts me out on a limb here.

Michael.