I've said it before but I'll say it again: my inner geek loves computerised voting and is really looking forward to tyring out the new voting machines next year. However, my non-geek self is becoming increasingly concerned about the replacement of paper and pen.
It has been pointed out elsewhere that anyone can see a mark made on paper so the count can easily be scrutinised by anyone and that is part of the role of the tallymen. However, electronic counting is not as transparent. The mechanism by which votes are stored and counted is known only to a technical elite. The software governing the election is proprietary and cannot be examined by third parties for "security reasons." In fact, if ever an example were needed of the usefulness of open source software this is it. By making the source code freely available, indpendent software engineers would at least be able to examine the code and raise flags if they come across anything worrisome.
In fact researchers at John Hopkins University in the US found the source code for Diebold touch-screen voting machines used in 37 states in the US at an unsecured FTP site on the Diebold company server. Basic security flaws included embedding passwords in souce code and a lack of encryption allowing malicious election or company workers to alter ballots after they had been cast.
And now, more worringly, however, is the stifling of dissent. This article reports that Dr. Rebecca Mercuri an expert on voting machine security and who is calling for voters to be given a printout of their ballot has been banned from a conference on the subject in Denver. Another member of her group was also banned but had partial credentials restored.
There has been little or no debate on the move to computerised voting here. And this is something we need to address quickly.
2:11:51 PM  Google It!
|
