Digital voting - good or bad?

[brianleahy]

Many of us here are IT professionals, and most of us can, at least conceptually, appreciate the enormous potential advantages of recording votes electronically and tallying them by computer.

Yet most of us are also well aware of the ways that large-scale networks can fail or malfunction, and the potential for cyber-vandalism to either cripple the system or illegally tamper with the results.

On balance, is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Let's vote on it, and feel free to comment.

 

[marz]

I think that as long as there is a voter verifiable paper trail, ie: I vote electronically, get a slip of paper that shows my votes, and I can verify that they're recorded accurately, then put that slip of paper in a box in case a recount is warranted, then it's an OK use of technology.

Without the voter verifiable paper trial, no way man!

Quite frankly, I think we'd be better served, by some form of physical vote casting, yes it may take longer to tally the results of the voting, but confidence in the results of any election is the hallmark of faith in the system.

 

[symphonix]

In Australia, the paper system is very quick and reliable. Polling officials at the booth mark down each voter on an optical readable page. The votes are cast using pencil and paper, and are counted manually by a large number of volunteers each with a large number of scrutineers. We generally get the result in the evening of the same day, though close seats might take a day or two to be decided.

Aside from the suppposed speed of getting the result, I fail to see what advantages electronic voting is supposed to offer. It is unlikely to be as secure, reliable, or easy-to-prove the results in a court of law.

 

[Satcomer]

All I know is that my Polling place machines looked like it were running a form of Windows! When I asked the official (it looked like he was from a retirement home) about the electronic process he was still very puzzled. It gave me the impression that the electronic voting booths were thrown in place just because they are electronic and new! The polling people seemed a little confused in the electronic polling and were following a prepared script with their answers to my questions. However, they did answer one question about how the final tally is transfered to the State Headquarters. The old guy (he had to be almost 75 years old) actually said they transfer the polling place's results via 56K modem that they dial into! He actually complained about during 2002 and the wait for the ONE modem to free up in the STATE capital. So all the polling places dial into ONE State election headquarter modem one at a time. He did say though that the phone number is secret (for the modem) and the phone number changes right before the election.

 

[Tetano]

I don't know the american system for electronic polling, here in Italy we use a good permanent pencil, so, what about the authentication method? is it possible to double a vote or the machine is locked for a period? 'cause i've also read that there was not only the Bush-Kerry decision, but also other question....

 

[lnoelstorr]

A little comedy:

http://boomchicago.cyso.net/images/Voting_Machine.mov