[E-voting] Why we can't decide on a VVAT method?

[Fergal Daly]

While I agree that to do what you've listed below is serious hard work (and
I think way beyond the scope of ICTE), I still think it's quite practical to
describe some existing VVAT solutions in enough detail to be a useful basis
for our campaign and that's all we need. As we've seen, there is a certain
level of commonly accepted reliability for well known equipment. So we don't
need to prove that for example a ballot printer has a mean time to failure
of X days, we can just point to Lotto machines etc.

So while the below is interesting and hopefully will be done by someone
someday, all we really need is for 1 or 2 people to describe their favourite
VVAT in sufficient detail and have it criticised on the list, then we can
present that as an acceptable option,

F


On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 09:40:58PM +0000, Aidan Delaney wrote:
> Hey all,
> 	Given that everyone here has an interest in democracy, some are voting
> geeks, some are techno-literati and some are Margret McGaley, why can't
> we come up with a universally accepted manner of implementing VVAT for
> DRE?
> 	Simply, it's a _very_ complex problem.  We've got to go back to the
> very start
> 	* research and devise all reasonable VVAT methods,
> 	* formally specify the methods,
> 	* research the effectiveness of each varient,
> 	* verify the accuracy of each varient.
> We deride the government for not having done this and instead choosing a
> Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) system that is not up to the task.
> 	So an observation; the above list will take about two years of work for
> a small, dedicated research team (approx three members).  And some
> questions:  Do we have the resources for such a project (knowing that
> Mags herself is currently working on it)?  Where can we get the
> resources for said project?  Is there any point in suggesting a solution
> without knowing the above data?
> 	This is a tricky problem.  I don't think we can "make up" possible
> solutions without extensive research.