Voting Machines
My college classmate Ed Felten has an interesting series of posts
about the
lack of security of voting machines.It
is a fact that the electronic voting machines are woefully insecure, and can be
unnoticeably hacked by unscrupulous individuals. This is
unacceptable.Democrats and Republicans
often argue at this point about whether or not the results were altered in the
2004 election. For me, that's in the past, and is an irrelevant
diversion.We can all agree that future
elections should be secure -- and so obviously secure that the results are
beyond reproach. Optical scan voting machines -- that's the one where you dot
the dots on a piece of paper, like in a high-school standardized test -- work.
The voter can verify his vote is correct as he casts it, and there's a
verifiable paper trail. It's cheap, reliable, and verifiable. It works even if
the machine breaks down or the power goes out. Direct Recording Electronic
voting machines, on the other hand, are frighteningly vulnerable, expensive, and
provide no significant advantages. Why would we even consider such a
technology?
Filed Wed - September 20, 2006, 10:16 AM in
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