e voting

[Tim May]

On Nov 21, 2003, at 10:12 AM, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:

> On Friday 21 November 2003 12:19, Tim May wrote:
>> On Nov 21, 2003, at 8:16 AM, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:
>>> Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is expected to announce today that  
>>> as
>>> of 2006, all electronic voting machines in California must be able to
>>> produce a paper printout that voters can check to make sure their  
>>> votes
>>> are properly recorded.
>>>
>>> http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me- 
>>> shelley21nov21,1,847438.story?
>>> coll=la-headlines-california
>>
>> Without the ability to (untraceably, unlinkably, of course) verify  
>> that
>> this vote is "in the vote total," and that no votes other than those
>> who actually voted, are in the vote total, this is all meaningless.
>
> Quite true.  But given the fact that we don't have that ability *now*,  
> what
> exactly is the difference?  Other than streamlining and centralizing  
> the
> present distributed corruption?
>

The point being that this "electronic voting" is just "syntactic  
sugar," superficial glitter.

None of the interesting and robust foundations from crypto are being  
used.

(Not that I am necessarily advocating this.)

For the next ten years there will be endless babble on television about  
"the revolution of electronic voting," when in fact it's just a g-job  
to give voting machine companies some new business.

--Tim May