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Will we, should we e-Vote?
Tyler Hamilton - Technology Reporter - The Toronto Star
Critics [of e-voting] warn that overzealous politicians with new money to burn are making a bad situation even worse by jumping too quickly on the technology bandwagon. Many of those critics are technologists themselves, arguing that opportunistic companies are selling automated and online voting systems that aren't yet ready for prime time in terms of reliability, security and privacy. "After 2000, there was this knee-jerk reaction to try to solve the problem," says cryptographer David Chaum, known as the inventor of digital cash, or eCash. "The states bought tonnes and tonnes of these touch-screen systems. They rushed to buy, but the systems are worse than punch cards ... to me it's unbelievable." Chaum, and academic experts such as professor Rebecca Mercuri at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, maintain that the biggest problem with current electronic voting systems is that they fail to provide an audit trail. In other words, if somebody deliberately tampers with a touch-screen terminal or if software works incorrectly there is no sure way for authorities to know there is a problem. If a problem is suspected, the anonymous nature of the votes makes it virtually impossible to investigate.

"If any candidate wishes to seek a recount, the only one they will get from the touch-screen machines is a print-out of the same electronic data residing inside of the machines," wrote Mercuri in a critique of the latest Florida election. In Mercuri's opinion, a print-out of the data doesn't cut it. She knows, with her own background in computer programming, that it's easy for one thing to be displayed on a touch screen and another thing to be saved in a machine's memory � whether by mistake or as sabotage. A printout of the existing data would simply be an "Enron-style" audit, meaning what voters see is possibly a mask on the truth.

posted by An Old Curmudgeon 8:59 AM