At 05:48 PM 8/6/03 -0400, Adam Shostack wrote:
Huh? Voters don't control the security of the voting system any more than we control the security of the credit rating/id theft system.
The only way to show vote fraud would be to get enough voters to document that the State lied. That would depend on getting enough voters to document their votes such that the non-participants' share in the survey is insignificant to the outcome, as is other noise. Documenting might involve cameras. But cameras might be disallowed because admitting them admits a "vote buying" attack, since votes can then be demonstrated to the payer, much like paper receipts. The current system works, to the extent it does, because of the adversarial and open nature of the supervisory parties. Paper, absentee ballots could be xeroxed as "proof". All fakable of course. Absentee ballots increase participation, and leave a better paper trail than computers, if anyone trustable cares to look. .... One question in voting threat analysis is how many conspirators are involved. Electronics lets you decrease that number.