[E-voting] Re: a new voting system

[Joseph Kiniry]

On Fri, 18 May 2007, Colm MacCarthaigh <colm at stdlib.net> wrote:

> Subject: Re: [E-voting] Re: Re: a new voting system
> To: Timothy Murphy <tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie>
> Cc: e-voting at lists.stdlib.net
> Message-ID: <20070518144256.GA12510 at infiltrator.gizzard.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15
>
> On Fri, May 18, 2007 at 03:24:49PM +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
>>> This is fundamentally incompatible with the laws of physics.  
>>> Electronic
>>> components are simply too small and operate at too quick a time- 
>>> scale
>>> for any level of surity.
>>
>> That's a bit sweeping, surely
>
> Nope.
>
>> (as also is ClearSoftware's claim).
>> I don't see what the size of electronic components has to do with it.
>
> It has everything to do with it, it's basically the only reason why
> trustworthy electronic voting is unimplementable, it is incapable of
> human-level review.
>
> -- 
> Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm 
> +pgp at stdlib.net

Colm, I strongly disagree with this assertion, as do many expert  
computer scientists and cryptographers, if I am interpreting your  
statements correctly---by "trustworthy electronic voting," I presume  
you mean "trustworthy, verifiable elections operated via electronic  
voting."

One need not have trustworthy electronic voting equipment to have a  
trustworthy, verifiable election.  This is the entire point of a half  
dozen or more of the recently proposed voting systems like those of  
Adida, Chaum, Clarkson, Myers, Neff, Rivest, Ryan, Schneider, and  
others.

Of course, I personally advocate that the electronic voting  
equipment, both hardware and software, must be designed and  
constructed to the highest standards, but that is an orthogonal issue.

Best,
Joe Kiniry
---
Joseph Kiniry
School of Computer Science and Informatics
University College Dublin
http://secure.ucd.ie/
http://srg.cs.ucd.ie/