Anthony Brock wrote: >>>>Crispin Cowan <crispin@private> 09/10/03 11:33PM >>> >>>> >>>> >>I don't buy that. No criticism of Anitian; rather Oregon's vote by mail >>system is woefully vulnerable: >> >> * Simple mail fraud. >> * Coercion: there is no evidence that individuals are no coereced to >> vote particular ways by family members, enforcement goons, or bribery. >> * There is no VVAR (Voter Verifiable Audit Record) of any kind. In >> fact, the voter has no evidence at all that their vote was counted. >> >> >Of course, VVAR didn't exist even prior to vote-by-mail. While coercion and mail fraud are recent additions to the list, voters have never known if their votes have counted. > An approximation of VVAR exists with paper ballots. I know how I marked my ballot, because I can see it in my hand. I see it go into the ballot box. Election observers (from each party) sit and watch all day to ensure that the box is not disposed of, and that no one stuff it, and then they observe the counting. There is a verifiable chain of custody of the ballots. This doesn't work for digital voting, because the neighborhood busy-bodies who do election observing cannot detect what goes on inside a Diebold machine: arbitrary amounts of fraud can happen inside the software without anyone knowing. Open source software doesn't help, because the software can still be tinkered with in the election machine after it has been audited. This doesn't work for vote by mail, because ballots can be intercepted anywhere between the voter and the counting offices. Want to rig a close election? Bribe 100 letter carriers. Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. http://immunix.com/~crispin/ Chief Scientist, Immunix http://immunix.com http://www.immunix.com/shop/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Sep 11 2003 - 09:43:40 PDT