[pp.int.general] Towards a secure eDemocracy platform based on Web service standards

[Marko Mitrovic]

Traditional voting systems are very easy to rig if ones in power have
desire to do so. Digitalized system offers more protection, IMO.

I'll put aside hacking vulnerabilities from my example as they are the same
as rigging traditional voting. But digital voting offers voter a chance to
check was his vote stolen or not. How? Simple. When voting you get a secret
code that is connected to your vote and you can at any time see is choice
same in the central system. As everything is anonymous, having that code
would not be able to show who voted what, but only give possibility to
check regularity of single vote for one who knows what it should be.

Granted, this security system could also be implemented with traditional
voting where you would get that code on paper and take it home with
yourself, and everything would remain anonymous as no one knows who used
which ballot. But this would probably take too much work and entering data
into computers, so digital system would be better suited for this.

On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 1:28 PM, Antonio Garcia <ningunotro at hotmail.com>wrote:

>  Most important... for it to be verifiably tamperproof, not only
> technically, but also from the social engineering point of view.
>
> If we can not have an easy way to verify the election has not been rigged,
> then we´d better stick to less ´practical´ways of voting that offer more
> guarantees or at least make tampering way more expensive.
>
> Computers and computerised procedures are too easy to manipulate.
>
>
> Antonio.
> PP-ES
>
> From: a.halsall at pirateparty.org.uk
> To: rms at gnu.org; pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:48:02 +0100
> Subject: Re: [pp.int.general] Towards a secure eDemocracy platform based
> on Web service standards
>
>
> On Friday 13 July 2012 01:19:45 Richard Stallman wrote:
> >     There is nothing "100% secure-proofed" in a world where we can't even
> >     decide if we're living in the matrix.
> >
> > The question is not whether it is "100% secure-proofed".
> > The question is whether it is grossly rotten or not.
> >
> > For traditional voting systems, we have some idea of how
> > vulnerable they are -- from simple experience.  For new proposed
> > computerized systems, we don't have experience to go by.
> > They are surely less than 100% reliable, but are they
> > less than 10% reliable?  We don't know, and actually using
> > them gives us little information, since we cannot check
> > the official results they give.
>
> For me it has always been a question as to the benefits of computerised voting.
>
> What problems are we trying to solve? Participation? Speed of getting a result?
> >
> > --
> > 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
> > ____________________________________________________
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> >
>
> --
> Andy Halsall
> Campaigns Officer
> Pirate Party UK
> +44 (0) 7505111705
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>
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