[E-voting] Ohio to use paper ballots !!

[vote at electronic-vote.org]

Ohio's Secretary of State Ken Blackwell announced on Jan, 12th a directive 
by which all 88 Ohio counties must adopt a voting system of paper ballots, 
marked by hand and read by optical-scanning devices (PCOS).
 http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/110561239920 
8372.xml 

    More information on the Ohio state website:
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/news/index1.htm 

What do you think about Mr. Blackwell's directive?
I'm so happy since it confirms all my points against e-vote 

 From a "usability" point of view Paper Elections may be as good as 
electronic elections, infact, ballot papers can also be voted using offline 
devices which actually print them following the directions given by each 
elector. Such offline devices, located in the polling stations, can use 
video or audio to help electors with sigth or language problems. Each 
elector verifies that his printed ballot paper is what he wants and then he 
places it into the traditional ballot box. Obviously such devices must be 
offline (not connected to any other computer nor network) because this is 
the only way we can be sure their results are not fraudulently 
remote-controlled nor monitored. 

 ------------------ Back to e-vote ----------------------------- 

I think voting is one of the (few) human activities not suited to be handled 
by computers. The basis of this statement is not technical but theoretical 
and it is a consequence of the fact that votes MUST be kept secret (I'm sure 
we all agree on that!). 

The only way to ensure vote anonimity is to store votes without any 
reference which could ever link any vote to its voter. 

But if we have data without external entities we can check with, we can
decide to trust it or not to trust it, but for sure we are not able to
verify it. 

Just as an example let's suppose to have some data telling that a certain
person is 20 years old. Obviuosly we could check such info only if we had a
reference to the person, but if data is anonymous we can't check it (since
we don't know who is he/she). 

In whichever way we migth record votes, they will always be anonymous
records and thus we'll never be able to verify each vote is actually the
same one expressed by the elector (since we don't know who is he/she). 

As an obviuos consequence, the final electoral results (being based on
anonymous electoral records) are unverifiable, too! 

We can verify the number of anonymous objects, but we cannot verify the
correctness of anonymous records: believe it or not, we can verify votes,
but not vote records! 

In traditional elections we keep and count the vote itself (the ballot
paper). That's why traditional election's result are verifiable! 

In electronic elections we store and count record of the vote (which vote is 
actually the pressing of a push button or the touching of a certain screen
area). That's why electronic election's can't be verified and thus we must
passively accept any result we are given! 

Since the object of elections is giving the power to rule nations with
millions of peolple, we can't rely on the honesty of anybody (governments,
parties, lobbies, economical powers, foreign countries...), but we need
elections to be verifiable. 

That's way electronic vote, being unverifiable, is not suitable for
democracy! I say e-vote is not only a technical problem but a social one! 

If you feel the above ideas are not completely stupid please have a look to
my site "electronic vote & democracy" 

     http://www.electronic-vote.org 

I'll be very glad to have any feedback from you. 

Yours Faithfully
Emanuele Lombardi