more on Who's afraid of digital voting? Jim Lucier points to John Fund article...

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ed Gerck <egerck () nma com>
Date: July 31, 2004 3:43:39 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Who's afraid of digital voting? Jim Lucier points to 
John Fund article...



David Farber wrote:

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: For Politech--Who's afraid of digital voting?
> Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 22:45:28 -0400
> From: James Lucier
> For a long time I have wondered how anyone who believes that properly
> constructed, authenticated, and encrypted paperless transactions can be
> safer and more secure than paper based transactions by any reasonable
> standard can buy into the theory that digital balloting can never work
> unless it achieves some impossible degree of perfection.

This is a commom misconception. Voting is not a banking transaction.
For example, contrary to banking, a ballot (ie, a transaction in bank
terms) must be not be linkable to whoever did it. This is an absolute
requirement for public elections in the US (that must not be broken
even under court order) and is specially hard to guarantee because
voters are not anonymous (they have to be well-identified) to begin
with. Further, a voter should not be able to prove, not even to
himself, how he voted. Compare this with banking: if there is a debit
of $10,000.00 in our account, how would you feel if no one (not even
you) could prove that the debit is not yours? Clearly, the transactions
operate under very different premises in elections versus banking.

Also, banks are willing to accept a certain amount of fraud inherent
in their business because, on average, loss is covered by insurance.
However, one cannot accept an average level of 1% of fraud when
conducting an election. Also, insurance is not an acceptable
mechanism for dealing with fraud in elections. One cannot socialize
the cost of fraud in elections.

Regards,
Ed Gerck

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