[E-voting] Summary of meeting

[Fergal Daly]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 11:56:50AM +0000, Cian wrote:
> Hm. My thoughts about this lead me to the conclusion that coming up with a
> precise description - technology, policies, procedures and all - is not really
> our job; all we can realistically do is point out what is wrong with the current
> system and why it can't be trusted as well as the one it is replacing.
> 
> It is up to engineers and security/elections/policy people to figure out
> exactly what would work - what we need to point out is that this has not been
> done. No-one has seriously sat down and worked out a business case. No-one has
> made a really deep comparison of the strengths & weaknesses of the paper system
> vis a vis the electronic system. From the Government, we've had nothing but
> half-assed ideas about how great it would be to be a bang-up-to-date electronic
> democracy, and an incredible tendency to uncritically believe whatever the
> vendors are saying.
> 
> Lots of really foundational work just hasn't been done, and I think that it's
> asking a bit much of an ad-hoc, unfunded organisation to provide all of the
> answers. We can only try and get people to understand that the emperor has no
> clothes.
> 
> Am I being unreasonable here?

No, but I think you're being optimistic by expecting them to be reasonable
in return. Once we blow a large hole in the side of their system they should
accept it and look for something that works. Instead they just
counter-attack and poke holes in a variety of notional systems, none of
which have been described very well, which makes them easy targets,
especially in a scoring-points-in-public argument.

I agree that it shouldn't be up to us to describe a working system in detail
but until we do we're wide open to fictitious objections. Perhaps the thing
to do is to take an existing system, eg the one in Talahassee, analyses it
and explain how it defeats all the objections, also analyse just how bad the
paper fiddling could get as that seems to be a big fear for them. Until we
have a concrete system we will always be labelled as "idealists who won't be
happy with any system".

If ICTE is not comfortable to be seen endorsing a particular system then let
someone write it up and let ICTE say "this system meets our requirements".

(warning pipe-dream ahead) If we produced a list of criteria and fictitious
objections it may even be possible to get a vendor to describe how their
system meets the criteria and avoids the objections and then ICTE can just
"approve" it. That way we stay independent while having something real that
we can defend,

F