Secure electronic voting and auditing
From SANS NewsBites
Study Finds Popular eVoting Machines Susceptible to Fraud (27 June 2006)
A Brennan Center for Justice study of electronic voting machines concluded that the three most widely used voting machines are vulnerable to fraud, but there are measures that can be taken in all three cases to boost their integrity. Roughly 80 percent of American voters are expected to use electronic voting machines in elections this November. Representative Rush Holt (D-N.J.) has introduced a bill that would require all voting machines to provide a verifiable paper audit trail.
http://news.com.com/2102-7348_3-6088464.html?tag=st.util.print
I wonder what the nature of the auditing is?
Voting systems must verify that each person can only vote once, but there must be no way to tie a voter to his/her ballot.
This poses many interesting auditing issues.
Mix-nets can help, but I don’t expect to see that kind of thing anytime soon.
I remember studying a scheme in a class I took where individuals would receive a coupon which could be used in conjunction with a sister coupon to verify that a vote actually counted in a final tally.
I’ll have to look that up again.
Electronic voting has a long way to go before I’ll trust it.
With paper balloting, we have several advantages:
- It’s a system that’s been conducted for centuries, and lots of auditing can take place at each step of the process.
- Error rates in tallying can be quantified, and, hopefully, are identical across all voting populations.
With voting, the perception of security is important to voters. A black box with some cute touch-screen does not feel as secure as something they can pick up, hold, and watch.
With electronic voting, the ability to swap millions of votes in the “ether” makes auditing much tougher. Voters hear about computer breaches every day on the news. Overcoming this stigma will make electronic voting tougher to mainstream.
That said, jurisdictions seem to be moving full steam ahead with adopting electronic voting machines, despite the overwhelming evidence of their insecurity.
Last time I voted in Maryland, I told the polling official that I had evidence that the voting machines they were using were susceptible to fraud. They kindly informed me that I cold fill out a paper ballot, but that my vote would only be counted in the event of a run-off election.
Good job, Maryland!
Bill