CDR: Re: A secure voting protocol

[Ken Brown]

"Trei, Peter" wrote:
> 
> > From:         Anonymous[SMTP:nobody at remailer.privacy.at]
> > Peter Trei wrote:
> >
> > > I can state from personal experience that Silver Nitrate solution will
> > > produce stains on skin which gradually blacken in the light, and
> > > don't come off till your skin wears off.
> >
> > But what happens when it is applied to Lakeesha Aswamba's finger?  Would
> > the staining be visible?
> >
> I'll ignore the possibility that there is a racist implication behind
> this....
> 
> Who said it had to be black, or be Silver Nitrate? The example I saw
> used a purple dye. If you actually knew any blacks (I'm using that
> word instead of the currently PC 'African-American' because it's skin
> color that's under discussion, and the discussion applies to people
> outside the US as well), you'd know that the palmar side of the hand
> and fingers are much lighter than the back.

I was living in Kenya during a general election there about 20 years
ago. (I could have voted but chose not to, so Daniel Arap Moi got in
without any help from me :-) If I remember correctly there was some sort
of dye used.  The general atmosphere of that election was, of course,
very different from a British one (I've never been in the US at election
time). The police, who were supervising things, get a lot less respect
and a lot more fear than ours do.  And the voters were (in the district
I lived in) almost all poor farmers who would be very unlikely to sue,
or even complain loudly, at any apparent misbehaviour from a government
official.  No doubt if you tried the same trick in the US someone would
claim that the dye was carcinogenic, or that the blotchy colour had
caused them to look bad at an interview & lose the job or something.

> Also, if you want to get high tech, use a fluorescent dye mixed
> with DMSO. It'll penetrate deep into the skin, and be visible under
> UV (no cosmetic objections). I suspect it'd take weeks to wear off.

Doesn't have to be "high-tech", ordinary Indian ink would do (IIRC that
is just a fine suspension of carbon in water & a little alcohol?).
Anything that glows in the dark will lead to accusations about cancer.

And yes, if there are any white supremacist tunnel-rats reading this
from a secret sheep farm somewhere in Idaho,  black dye does show up on
African skin, even on the back of the hand.   I can't think of anyone I
know or meet regularly whose skin is actually black in colour.

Ken