[clug] e-Voting: What would you want in a smartphone App?

[Martijn van Oosterhout]

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 05:11:52PM +1100, Hal wrote:
> The point is enhanced by the fact that even if you have a technical  
> solution for /all/ of the security issues, the voting public still won't  
> believe it and it will cast extra suspicion over a result. Especially so  
> for the passionate supporters of the losing side. We hear dark  
> mutterings of nefarious election conduct enough as it is, mercifully, no  
> matter how disappointed we are with a result, such things have zero  
> credibility.

I was actually explained by someone once that it was theoretically
possible to build a voting system such that you could after the fact
prove that your vote was correctly counted in the end result, but in
such a way they you could not prove to anyone else how you voted.
Unfortunatly they didn't have any references...

That said, such a solution completely misses the social factor: the
"proof" would be mathmatical which most people won't understand and
probably complicated enough that people wont trust it.

As for the comment about voting machines in Holland; after the last
election there were calls from local councils to reintroduce the
electronic machines because:

- They're faster to count and faster to vote with (no screwing around
  with large sheets of paper).

- They work for disabled people.

- Because they're faster you need less of them than the number of
  ordinary polling booths which means it's easier for the officials to
  keep an eye on them. There were some issues with multiple people in
  one booth, which didn't really happen before.

And ofcourse to most people the flaws with the machines were
essentially theoretical. The social factor again. People *trusted*
them.

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout   <kleptog at svana.org>   http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Please line up in a tree and maintain the heap invariant while 
> boarding. Thank you for flying nlogn airlines.
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