BBV: [Tech/Theory] "Electronic Voting" by Ronald Rivest, MIT

[scottxyz]

Electronic Voting
by Ronald Rivest, MIT

Over the years, with varying degrees of success, inventors have repeatedly tried to adapt the latest technology to the cause of improved voting.

For example, on June 1, 1869 Thomas A. Edison received U.S. Patent 90,646 for an "Electric Vote-Recorder" intended for use in Congress. It was never adopted because it was allegedly "too fast" for the members of Congress.

Yet it is clear that we have not reached perfection in voting technology, as evidenced by Florida's "butterfly ballots" and "dimpled chads."

Stimulated by Florida's election problems, the California Institute of Technology and MIT have begun a joint study of voting technologies, with the dual objectives of analyzing technologies currently in use and suggesting improvements. This study, funded by the Carnegie Foundation, complements the Carter/Ford commision, which is focusing on political rather than technological issues. Electronic voting will be studied.

Among people considering electronic voting systems for the rst time, the following two questions seem to be the most common:

Could I get a receipt telling me how I voted?

Could the U.S. Presidential elections be held on the Internet?

The first question is perhaps most easily answered (in the negative), by pointing out that receipts would enable vote-buying and voter coercion: party X would pay $20 to every voter that could show a receipt of having voted for party X's candidate. Designated-verifier receipts, however, where the voter is the only designated verifier - that is, the only one who can authenticate the receipt as valid - would provide an interesting alternative approach to receipts that avoids the vote-buying and coercion problem. ...

The second question - can we vote remotely over the Internet - is more problematic.

http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/441505.html

(To download article, go to above link, right-click on 'PDF', and select 'Save Target as...'. Then open on your PC. Requires free Adobe Acrobat Reader.)

[punpirate]

1. Haven't had a chance to look at it...

... but does this article include the citation from the MIT/CalTech study on accuracy of different voting methods? The one that says punch cards are more accurate than electronic voting machines?

Cheers.