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

[Richard Stallman]

    You can't make any election 100% safe, trustable and private. There's
    always some flaws.

You can't make "lousy" the same as "fairly good"
by saying "nothing is perfect".

With paper voting it is hard to cheat a lot and prevent
others from noticing.  With a computer, that's easy.

    One can be forced to vote for anything, even in physical elections. Do
    you really think than women are free to pick their vote in male
    chauvinist countries?

Yes.  They can vote as they wish, then tell the men what the men want
to hear.

    voters in a tiny village, do you really think that the mafia-major of
    the village will not notice that you didn't stick to what he wanted?

He can't tell how you voted, if you use paper.  He can't watch you.

However, if you vote using a computer, very likely he can tell how you
voted.  Voting machines emit electromagnetic waves that can be picked
up from outside the building.  This was demonstrated with Brazil's
computerized voting machines.

    it's fucking easy, the one entering a privacy cabinet to hide
    what's his vote, that's the one who didn't voted what he wanted.

If anyone does NOT vote in the privacy cabinet, that is easily visible
to the people monitoring the election.  A dishonest vote-counting
program can't be seen.

    In PP-CAT we have a voting system where everyone can see its own vote
    and the total result, and only the System administrators (3) of the
    server hosting the voting system can check the database to see what
    voted every member (so far, it has never been done/requested).

This may be ok within PP-CAT.  Perhaps there is little danger anyone
will be bullied or bribed into voting a particular way; if so, this
system is no problem in that context.

--
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