Re: : electronic voting in Japan

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: izumiaizu () gmail com [izumiaizu () gmail com] On Behalf Of Izumi AIZU [iza () anr org]
Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2007 8:21 PM
To: David Farber
Cc: rdv () sfc wide ad jp
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: electronic voting in Japan

Dear Dave,
According to the Asahi newspaper article in Japanese on Dec 21, The ruling party coalition and the opposition party 
could not reach the full consensus on the electronic voting to be enacted into the law this year.

It was passed in the lower house, but since the ruling party coalition does not have the majority in upper house, they 
could not force it to pass.
They agreed to differ it to the next year.

They may reach consensus early next year, but it is still unclear if that happens or not.

izumi

2007/12/8, David Farber <dave () farber net<mailto:dave () farber net>>:


Begin forwarded message:

From: "Izumi AIZU" <iza () anr org<mailto:iza () anr org>>
Date: December 6, 2007 7:36:57 AM EST
To: dave () farber net<mailto:dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] electronic voting in Japan

Dear Dave,

My understanding is that e-voting had lost its credibility in Japan.

In July 2003, one local election conducted e-voting in Kani-city
in Gifu prefecture, but bad machine troubles happened and the
citizens brought this to the court. In July 2005, the Supreme Court decided thta the election result is void due to 
technical failure. Many cities are afraid of risking their election to unsecure system.

The latest agreement by three major political parties may change the
siutuation, but I am not sure if that happens so rapidly.

In cotrast, in Korea, e-voting is likely to be used for the next General
election. It is already used for primary election of the current presidential campaign, according to my friend working 
at the Institute for Korean Election Studies (IKES) under Korean Election Management Committee.

izumi





2007/12/6, David Farber < dave () farber net<mailto:dave () farber net>>:

________________________________________
From: Rod Van Meter [ rdv () sfc wide ad jp<mailto:rdv () sfc wide ad jp>]
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 1:45 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: electronic voting in Japan

Dave, for IP, if you wish...

There is an article in today's Yomiuri Shimbun (Japanese edition only --
page one, actually) about the possibility of electronic voting in
national elections next year.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/politics/news/20071206it01.htm
(try feeding it to your favorite online translator for a Dadaesque
interpretation)

Electronic voting machines have already been tried here, in a few
prefectural (state/province) elections.  Apparently, all of the major
parties are in agreement on this.

I just got a glance at the print version, which had a picture; they will
be touch panel machines that offer you a simple choice, then I believe
print out a sheet for confirmation and actual submission.  I'm fuzzy on
these details, don't quote me there; the online article doesn't really
say.

The article asserts that vote tabulation time can be dramatically
reduced, which seems unlikely, since the Japanese system is already
amazing efficient: results appear in as little as twenty minutes after
elections, despite being hand-counted.  There is a separate ballot for
each office, so they can be quickly sorted into boxes based on vote,
then the box is counted.  (Don't ask me how they verify validity.)

I asked some students about this, and one pointed me at a paper:

The Security Analysis of e-voting systems in Japan
Hiroki Hisamitsu, Keiji Takeda
Carnegie Mellon CyLab Japan
1-3-3 Higashikawasaki-cho, Chuo-ku, Kobe city, Hyogo prefecture, Japan
650-0044
hhisamit () andrew cmu edu<mailto:hhisamit () andrew cmu edu> tkeiji () cmu edu<mailto:tkeiji () cmu edu>

Abstract To assess trustworthiness of e-voting practices in Japan,
security of e-voting systems and their operational procedures are
examined. Through these analyses we concluded that current e-voting
security is heavily depending on protection by operational process
rather than security feature of the system and it is confirmed that
the systems provide only limited security feature though there is
large room for technical improvement. Typical security issues are lack
of protection mechanism of programs and data on counting machines and
on tabulate machines. This vulnerability enables malicious poll worker
or manufacturer to insert malicious code to generate arbitrary
election result.

> From the recent IPSJ Computer Security Symposium.  The abstract is in
both Japanese and English, but the paper is only in Japanese,
unfortunately.

                --Rod

P.S. I ran the Yomiuri article through Google's translator.  It has
gotten MUCH better recently (six months ago it was laughable and
unintellible, now it looks like poorly-written English), and offers the
user the original by hovering the mouse over a sentence, and even allows
the user to suggest a better translation.  Nice!



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--
                        >> Izumi Aizu <<

           Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita
           Kumon Center, Tama University, Tokyo
                                  Japan
                                 * * * * *
           << Writing the Future of the History >>
                                 www.anr.org<http://www.anr.org>

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--
                        >> Izumi Aizu <<

           Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita
           Kumon Center, Tama University, Tokyo
                                  Japan
                                 * * * * *
           << Writing the Future of the History >>
                                www.anr.org <http://www.anr.org>

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