To tell the truth I've never felt comfortable with e-voting and I live in Maryland which uses diebold machines.
Quite frankly the way that the entire 2000 mess in Florida was used to justify the rushed implementation of electronic voting systems. Typical case example of politicians trying to fix a problem only to make it even worse.
IMO if you are going to implement electronic voting do so in a way that you have a paper trail.
A few things I'd have in place:
-Have the voting machines print out a copy of the voters ballot choices which is then deposited by voter in a sealed and locked case that is linked to that specific machine.
-Said ballot should include a tag that identifies which machine was used by the voter.
-Downloading of data from voting machines should not lead to data being erased.
-Do random audits of poll totals from different machines comparing the results with the printed out ballots.
-Have voting machines tested by outside groups competing for a cash prize to those who succesfully and replicable find ways of hacking voting machines.
At least I'd start with that. I'm sure you can add a few more ideas to the setup.
An additional note speaking as somebody who grew up abroad the U.S. for most part is very loose about verifying the the identity of voters. If somebody wanted to steal an election there are older ways of doing so than hacking into a voting machine.
WMD
--Werehawk--
My mom's brief take on upcoming Guatemalan Elections "In last throes of preelection activities. Much loudspeaker vote pleading."
Quite frankly the way that the entire 2000 mess in Florida was used to justify the rushed implementation of electronic voting systems. Typical case example of politicians trying to fix a problem only to make it even worse.
IMO if you are going to implement electronic voting do so in a way that you have a paper trail.
A few things I'd have in place:
-Have the voting machines print out a copy of the voters ballot choices which is then deposited by voter in a sealed and locked case that is linked to that specific machine.
-Said ballot should include a tag that identifies which machine was used by the voter.
-Downloading of data from voting machines should not lead to data being erased.
-Do random audits of poll totals from different machines comparing the results with the printed out ballots.
-Have voting machines tested by outside groups competing for a cash prize to those who succesfully and replicable find ways of hacking voting machines.
At least I'd start with that. I'm sure you can add a few more ideas to the setup.
An additional note speaking as somebody who grew up abroad the U.S. for most part is very loose about verifying the the identity of voters. If somebody wanted to steal an election there are older ways of doing so than hacking into a voting machine.
WMD
--Werehawk--
My mom's brief take on upcoming Guatemalan Elections "In last throes of preelection activities. Much loudspeaker vote pleading."