I worked out a new voting system that,
combining the good points of paper voting with those of computing,
guarantees quick, honest and verifiable results.
Please read details at
www.ClearVoting.com
Electronic vote has three kind of problems:
- "Privacy" problems.
Votes must be kept forever absolutely anonymous.
- "Security" problems.
Related with the action of voting
(votes must be taken only from people having the right to vote, vote must be
granted to everybody having the right to vote,
votes must be collected, transmitted, and stored without any fraud.
- "Reliability" problems.
Related to the way the votes are counted
up and thus related to the question if we can trust the electoral results.
Let's assume we have already solved all the "privacy" and "security" problems. Even in this very
optimistic case the "trustworthiness" problem still exists: we can't know if the announced
results are correct. In other words who could ever certify the final tally of each
candidate?
To address the "trustworthiness" problem ongoing studies and working prototypes propose
to give the elector a way to check that his/her vote is properly recorded in the
computer where votes are tallied up.
This can be accomplished in various technical ways, but we should stop for a minute
and ask ourself which is the purpose of verifying that our vote is recorded as we
meant to.
Of course if we find out that our vote being improperly recorded, then we can
"call the police" (will "police" trust us or the computer?),
but
if our vote is properly recorded should we be satisfied and
therefore accept the results as good?
Not at all since we still miss the prove that our vote (and those of each elector) is
properly accouted
in the final tally. Its a joke to program any computer to show electors their true
vote and declare whichever result!
To certify the correctness of the final tally, we need all the following conditions:
- the accounting software is honest, faithful and secure
This condition to be met needs the entire organization holding the election
being honest, faithful and secure. We know that in real word this rarely happens, but we have been
optimistic from the beginning (assuming we solved any "security" problem), so we can assume such a
condition to be true.
- each vote has recorded a link to its elector to allow vote verification by their electors
This poses big problems concerning vote anonimity
- all the electors verify their vote simultaneusly, at the precise moment when votes
are counted up.
obviously we'll never be able to accomplish such condition
we will never solve the "trustworthiness" problem of the electronic vote.
It means that electronic vote is a beautiful (and expensive) toy which symply it's not suitable for its purpose which is (supposed to be) the election of our representatives according to the popular will.
P.S.
We would have only a few of the "privacy" and "security" problems and no "trustworthiness" problem at all
if we could have the certainty that the whole organization which helds the elections is honest,
faithful and secure. But, since people throughout history has done the worst action to get the power,
we can't have such a blind faith regardless of the kind of the electoral organization (public or private,
governmental or local) and regardless of the country we live in.
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