[E-voting] a new voting system

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 10:06:33AM +0200, vote wrote:
> After fighting e-voting for four years, I worked out a voting system that,
> combining the good points of paper voting with those of electronic voting,
> guarantees quick, honest and verifiable results.  

It doesn't! Problems:

	* It doesn't address voter privacy at all. The voter has no
	  means to ensure that their votes are not being recorded
	  in order. While the software you happen to write may do it,
	  the voter still has no means to ensure it. Someone else
	  could replace the software.

	* "the VVPB is checked by the elector and then automatically
	   stored inside the voting booths", a critical component
	   of our a VVPB works is that the voter can be relatively
	   sure their vote is being stored securely because they get
	   to put it in an ordinary ballot box. You don't address
	   how this works in your system, the word "automatically"
	   terrifies me. What does that mean? What if the vote printed
	   is *not* correct, what happens then? You say there are
	   no void ballots, you say you use ordinary PC's. None of
	   this makes sense. The detail of your proposal doesn't 
 	   add up.

	* Why give a quick result? There is simply no way to guage
	  likelihood of error from the electronic result, the system
	  may or may not have been compromised, and there may or may
	  not have been an operational error. An error of 100 votes
	  is as likely as 100,000 votes. So how do you know whether
	  to re-count or not? So why bother with a quick result?
	  What's the point when we can have no confidence in it anyway.

	* I can't see how this system as a whole would reduce expense
	  compared to a completely ordinary hand-counted election,
	  contrary to your claims.

	* What does "active monitoring of the people" mean? What
	  about voter privacy?

> It uses a minimum level of
> electronics and it based upon the monitoring of the public in such a way
> that it eliminates ALL the risks that current e-voting systems pose to
> Democracies.

It really doesn't (and it definitely doesn't use the minimum of
electronics).

The system is pointless and does not address many long-standing problems
with e-voting systems.

-- 
Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm+pgp at stdlib.net