[pp.int.general] Online voting versus online discussion

[Richard Stallman]

    > With paper ballots, a big fraud requires a big and broad effort, and
    > there is a chance for it to be spotted.  With computers, even a big
    > fraud can be done quietly and nobody can tell afterwards.  If a
    > candidate got 1041 votes in a town, the same crack could change it to
    > 1042, or 1051, or 1141, or 2041.
    OK, how would you do that in an end-to-end auditable system?

It depends on details.  A botnet might do it.

Fiddling the public terminals provided for people vote from might do
it.  This does not necessarily require access to the code in those
terminals.

For instance, there was e-voting fraud in the US a few weeks ago.
Some machines were designed such that the voter thought she had
finished, and left; then the machine asked "Are you sure?"  An
election worker then entered the voting booth answered "no", and
changed the votes.

There might be a flaw in the mathematics of the supposedly
auditable system.

Your argument is that if I can't present a specific attack that WILL
work, based on the very abstract description given, then the system
must be secure.  That argument is not valid.

You also make the argument that because paper-based voting systems are
not perfect, they must be equally flawed.  That argument is not valid.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call