SciAm Article on eVoting Systems

[Pangloss]

Great article this month in Scientific American on electronic voting systems.

 

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00018DD5-73E7-1151-B57F83414B7F0000

 

Let me know if it requires registration and I'll just post some excerpts, but I'd rather not because it has interesting illustrations.

 

One of the more interesting examples they talk about is a system that actually does a printed receipt that's encased behind a transparent panel. The voter looks at the paper to make sure it's correct and then touches a button to confirm, and then gets a receipt. That way a paper trail exists, in case of electronic screw-up, but the official paper printout is KEPT, so it can't be tampered with.

 

In a related note, California governor Schwarzenegger (yes I cut-and-pasted his name!) passed a bill today banning paperless voting systems by 2006, so a system like this would be required.

 

That article can be found here.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=E%20Voting%20Paper%20Trail

[5614]

well theres not really a possed question, so here's my view:

 

(a) why is this in computer sciences, it should be in the politics section or something

(b) its a good idea, however electronics systems can be tricked, the fact is that, whilsts this is a good method, there is a flaw in everything.

you'd have to limit people to one vote, they cant just click one guy 15 times each!, you'd have to gather all of the electronic data somewhere, this somewhere could be hacked.

[drz]

I was listening to Allen Handleman the other night, and he had some guy call in asking his guest, I forget who but a republican, about e-voting security. He claimed that these voting terminals could be accessed wirelessly from up to a mile away.

 

I had no clue wireless tech had gotten so strong myself. While I'm sure these machines can be hacked, I doubt it can be done from a mile away wireless.

[Pangloss]

5614: Actually that's one of my dilemmas/questions lately as well, in a larger sense. I'm working on a Master's in Computer Information Systems, and it's not exactly Computer Science, but it's still an area of computer-related research and study, with plenty of legitimate grant-work underway. More along the lines of "applied" computer science, if you will.

 

I thought perhaps this would be considered an example of this.

[Pangloss]

He claimed that these voting terminals could be accessed wirelessly from up to a mile away.

 

I can't think of any particular reason why an eVoting manufacturer would be stupid enough to put a wireless LAN card in their machine. I don't believe there was anything about that in the SciAm article.