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

[Adam Shostack]

On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 01:49:26PM -0700, Steve Schear wrote:
| At 11:54 2003-08-06 -0400, Adam Shostack wrote:
| >Well, if you can't win on the truth, win on the procedures.
| >
| >At least Dr. Mercuri is in fine company there, ranging all the way
| >back to Socrates and Galileo.  Little consolation, I know, as our
| >democracy gets replaced by a kleptocracy, but what can you do?
| >
| >Maybe she should set up stealdemocracy.com, a new voting machine
| >company.  Sell machines that explicitly let you steal elections.  Get
| >some press.
| 
| A better solution, already available to voters, is to request an absentee 
| voter form.  If a substantial number of voters asked to vote this way it 
| would overwhelm the voting machinery and completely negate any cost savings 
| expected from the distrusted automated systems.

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.
And similarly, your choice to not play doesn't protect you.  Tim's
idea of using the voting system's security to accelerate the
de-legitimization of the system is a fine one, although it has the
risk that the statists will get awfully violent as we try to ignore
them out of existance.  I don't see how an absentee ballot is going to
make anything any better.

Adam



-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume