Your position on eVote

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

> Posted-Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 08:55:34 -0400
> Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 08:55:34 -0400
> From: shap () viper cis upenn edu (Jonathan Shapiro)
> To: jgill () ep gov
> Cc: farber () central cis upenn edu
> Subject: Your position on eVote
>
> Mr. Gill:
>
> Recently I came across the following claim:
>
>   Jock Gill, the White House's communications expert in charge of
>   online services, declined to install eVote, software for voting in
>   cyberspace.  Mr. Gill called eVote "dangerous to democracy".
>
> For issues relating to the country as a whole, eVote may or may not
> present a representative sample of the population.  The rapid
> proliferation of private access to the internet suggests that it may
> be; we won't know until we put an electronic voting mechanism in place
> and find out by measuring the results.
>
> For issues relating to technology, however, eVote would provide an
> excellent mechanism for rapid feedback from the technical community to
> the legislative and executive branches.  Both branches have made
> serious technical mistakes that could have been easily averted if such
> a straw vote mechanism were in place - the technical community is
> conversant with issues that politicians have neither the time,
> inclination, or incentives to pursue.
>
> In light of this, I'm hoping you will clarify in what way a mechanism
> such as eVote is "dangerous to democracy."
>
>
> Jonathan S. Shapiro