Computer Voting Expert, Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, Ousted From Elections Conference

[Major Variola (ret)]

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.