The Challenges of Digital Voting

[Lodestar]

Scientific American

Information security expert Avi Rubin explains why we won't be voting on our smartphones anytime soon


In researching my Scientific American column about the dismal prospects for online voting, I interviewed Avi Rubin, Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, technical director of Johns Hopkins's Information Security Institute, and author of Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting. He's been deeply immersed in the research surrounding electronic voting for decades.

Since I have more room on the Web than I do on the printed page, I would like to share more of our conversation here.

David Pogue: Are there any steps that would make you, a security researcher, comfortable with electronic voting?

Avi Rubin: In principle, I think that paper ballots are far superior to electronic voting machines. Even if the machines are high quality (and none of the current ones on the market have proven to be that), the inability to manually recount, to audit, and to prevent rigging and the potential for widespread, wholesale fraud are deal breakers for purely electronic voting. Paper ballots are not a panacea, but without them there is an opportunity for fraud that is much more widespread.

MORE : http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pogue-the-challenges-of-digital-voting/

[TreasonousBastard]

1. I don't get Nigerian Prince emails any more, but...

I just got an email from my bank that some retailer blew it again so I'll be getting a new credit card. Just got a phone call from the bank, too. So far, no one has used my card, but this means I have to change all of those automatic charges every month-- a real pain. And I never charge things off my phone, so someone got into a secure system.

I can't believe that it is so important to allow those people who can't get off their asses to get to a polling place to vote that we put the entire system at risk for them. Bad enough we put our bank accounts in the hands of Apple and Google, but now our ballot system?

I am NOT a hand-counted paper ballot freak. Those old ballots had more problems than even the worst electronic machines, but here we have paper ballots scanned electronically so they can be sampled for problems and a real recount can be held if needed. Adding iPhones to the mix would be a horrible mistake.