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Panel: The Business of Electronic Voting
Place: Financial Cryptography 2001, Grand Cayman, Feb 21st, 2001 10:40 AM.
Panel Chair: Moti Yung, CertCo
Panelists: Ed Gerck, safevote.com
Andy Neff, VoteHere.net
Ron Rivest, MIT
Avi Rubin, AT&T research
Abstract:
This panel will concentrate on the emerging business of e-voting.
The problems associated with traditional voting machines in a national
election---their unreliability, inaccuracy and other potential
hazards---were placed in an international limelight by the last US
presidential election. At the same time, but less conspicuously, an
industry centered around e-voting has started to emerge, offering
various solutions for national, boardroom, company-wide, and other
sorts of elections.
Indeed, the cryptographic research community has dealt with issues
related to security and robustness of e-voting as a fundamental
protocol problem. In contrast, this panel will discuss issues
regarding the real-life aspects of actual implementations of voting
systems.
We will discuss basic requirements and problems associated with the
reality of election technology and the business built around it,
covering issues of reliability, fairness, and scalability, and asking
such questions as: Does one solution fit all situations? How much
security is actually required? Is e-voting for real? How far are we
from ``real'' voting? Is the Internet the right arena for voting?
What is the interaction between the technology and its quality and the
business? Is it a business at all? (Is there money to be made, and
how? Alternatively: does e-voting really belong in ``financial
cryptography''?) What are the social and legal implications of
e-voting?
We hope to learn about new angles to examine voting problems, to learn
about related burning issues of all kinds (social, business,
technology), and to learn about new questions for further basic,
systems, market, legal or social research.
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R. A. Hettinga