Right. Also ballot printers can selectively (1) delay or deny service; (2) manipulate the order of the candidates on the ballot or remove candidates from the ballot; and (3) modulate the voter's ability to select candidates. All of these attacks either reduce voting rates or manipulate voters into making the attacker's preferred choices. Since none of them create an inconsistency between the voter's intent and the VVPB, "verifying" the VVPB does nothing to catch them.I can't help it there are many things in this that are almost right. On Oct 30, 2007, at 2:49 PM, Hamilton Richards wrote:If the video's unsourced claim that "up to 10% of the electronically-generated paper records allowed by HR811 are damaged, unreadable, and unusable for audits" is based on anything, it's based on early implementations produced by manufacturers who have an interest in seeing them rejected. Electronically generated voter-verified paper ballots can be far more reliable than hand-marked ones, and far less vulnerable to ballot-box stuffing and spurious rejection by crooked election officials.If this has change, we need to see the data verifying it. The inherent problem with the paper trail is that there is no way to know. Voters don't check it. It is not easy to inspect. When there is a difference between the way a voter remembers marking a ballot and the paper, they just assume it was their mistake.
Code cannot be "validated" by inspection, but it sure can be, er, "invalidated".Concerning code inspection, it's universally accepted in computing science that code cannot be validated by inspection.David Wagner made this point. Effective disclosure would require that the inspector be able to do unit testing and follow the code with a debugger or other tools. That is what people do when they make software. They specify, code and test. All of this needs to be clear and transparent.
Yes, it sure does. Computerized casting devices are a necessary evil for the small number of voters who need certain kinds of assistance to vote independently. They are an unnecessary, expensive, insecure, unsupervisible extravagance for the vast majority of voters who can hand-mark paper ballots. Computerized tabulators are evil, but might or might not be necessary depending upon circumstances. At least they can effectively be audited.The mythical golden age -------------------- The video makes the claim that "we already have 'verifiable' elections. They're called hand counted, paper ballot elections. We don't need a federal bill...". The colorful history of election fraud in the days before computers is so widely known that this can only be another disingenuous claim. Its author's antipathy to the use of computers in elections is evident, but since it is unsupported by any logical arguments, it's far from persuasive.If there are fewer steps, fewer things to go wrong, that is a source of security. How can you dispute that. There can be fraud without computers. Using computers gives more means of cheating.
I agree. Some functions are so important to the preservation of Liberty that they must remain with government or with citizens themselves. Some good examples are courts (do you really want a private judge deciding whether you should go to prison?), the military (droves of Blackwater hens are flying home to roost just now), regulatory agencies (many, e.g., the FTC, have been "captured" by their industries and have thus failed of their purpose -- can you say "leaded toys"?) -- and elections. There's nothing wrong with elections officials getting paid or buying paper for ballots, but there is something wrong with delegating the presentation of ballots, the recording of selections, and the tabulation of results to private entities, particularly when that delegation involves the use of technology that's opaque to essentially all citizens.Profits are evil? ------------ The video ends by asserting that no one should make a profit from elections. Does that mean that election officials should not be paid? That the suppliers of printed paper ballots should provide them at cost? How about the printers' suppliers of paper and ink? This smells like a religious argument more than a logical one, and the thing about religion is that you either get it or you don't. Brandishing religious arguments at nonbelievers is famously counterproductive.The problem with the 'profit' motive in practice is that large corporations have the power to corrupt the system. History tells us that they do. The privatization of government functions opens the door to conflicts of interest. Not the same as paying a salary to elections officials.
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Received on Wed Oct 31 23:17:04 2007
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