Have You Seen This E-Voting System?? What Do You Think??

[snot]

" . . . voting systems designer David Bismark may have a solution.

* * * * *

"In his system, everyone gets a ballot with an encrypted barcode on it. On one side of the ballot is the list of candidates in a random order, and on the other are the checkboxes. When you vote, you rip it in half and keep the ordered list of candidates and turn in the half with the checkboxes and your barcode. You turn in that half and election workers scan it into the system.

"You can then take your half home and verify your votes online. And once the election is complete, the votes are decrypted "in several steps, spread among different organisations, and the plain-text, countable votes can then be tallied."

"This system makes it impossible for any one person or group to tamper with votes, instead requiring all of them to work together, something very improbable."

More at http://evoting.bismark.se/verifiable-electronic-voting/ (via Gizmodo at http://gizmodo.com/5596856/could-this-electronic-voting-system-make-fraud-impossible?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29 ).

[NV Whino]

1. I find this encouraging

I would love to see it tested. I wonder what the financial repercussions are with so many people involved.

[Bill Bored]

2. A number of such systems are available. You still need to verify that the tallies are correct. nt

[eomer]

3. This system has no transparency.

It is not possible for a human to verify a vote by direct observation. The only way to examine a ballot and determine for whom it votes is to use a computer algorithm to determine which candidates the checkmarks correspond to.

In other words, hand counts are impossible with this system, by design.

Fail.

[eridani]

11. +100 n/t

[Wilms]

4. Feh.

The tally would still be determined by computer. And with it I can sell my vote...or have it coerced. :(

[Bill Bored]

5. You may not be able to sell your vote if you can't prove what ballot order your ballot had.

If the ballot order rotation is randomized, then only you the voter know which order your ballot had. Knowing which position you chose does not disclose who you voted for. That's my understanding anyway.

[Wilms]

6. This quote: "You can then take your half home and verify your votes online."

That's what made me think there was an issue.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

7. its a trick system - "sounds complex must be really good"

I included that in voting news the other day but I didn't include my own opinion.

It all boils down to whether the layperson can see what is happening or do
we need some tech guru to intercede for us?

Also, it lends itself to vote buying nicely if the buyer and seller believe the
votes are actually being counted as cast.

[Wilms]

8. .

:applause:

[eomer]

10. Regarding vote selling.

Bill Bored is right that it doesn't lend itself to vote buying, but for a very specific exception.

After the voter leaves the polling station, she keeps the part of the ballot that wasn't shredded. This is the same piece of paper that was scanned. It has only the checkmarks and some barcodes. There is nothing on this paper that indicates (to a human viewer) the order of the candidates and therefore no way to tell which candidate the checkmarks correspond to. When the voter "verifies" her vote online, all she is shown by the system is the scan image of this same slip of paper. There is no way she can demonstrate whom she voted for to someone else.

The very specific exception is that if someone has the algorithms for decrypting the barcodes and thereby interpreting the individualized candidate order of each ballot, then that person could verify bought votes online.

I agree completely with what you said about complexity.

[Wilms]

12. Thanks eomer. Now I get it.

So vote buying/selling wouldn't be aided by this system.

We're just stuck with the usual potential of computer-aided vote stealing.

[gristy]

9. This idea has been kicked around for years

"verify your vote on line when you get home".

How the lay person will verify that his/her vote was counted correctly is another matter that this system does nothing to address.

[Bill Bored]

13. Exactly. But it has that placebo-like effect that a lot of folks might fall for.

For a voter to verify the vote tabulation, she would need to:
- have access to all the ballots -- not just her own;
- determine that all (or a "statistically significant" sample) of the ballots were authentic;
- have a means of independently recounting them.

That's well beyond the capabilities of most voters.

It might be something that the adversarial political parties could manage, assuming they cared enough about election integrity to want to make it happen. I'm not sure they do, given their lack of action on this issue so far. If the parties don't do it, then who can the voters trust to independently recount all these authenticated ballots?