April 06, 2004
Demand a paper trail for your vote
It's simple. We need a paper trail.
While computerized voting is here to stay and conceptually superior to anything else, that's not the issue. The issue is that the current systems are flawed. Until we fix these problems, we'll just have to bear the cost of creating a voter-verified paper trail. That's the backup, and while expensive, it pales in comparison to the costs of the presidential election fiasco of 2000.Posted by Norwood at April 6, 2004 02:49 PMIn a paper published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Symposium on Security and Privacy, the authors said the following regarding one particular commonly used electronic voting system: ``We identify several problems, including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats and poor software development processes.''
In case you're not a techie, this loosely translates into, ``The system is a disaster.''
There is more than one way to implement a paper backup system. One good way starts with the voter entering selections on a touch screen. Next, the terminal prints out a paper ballot behind a transparent shield and the voter reviews it. If the voter approves, the machine deposits the ballot in a lockbox attached to the voting terminal.
The electronically stored vote is the one that we count unless there's a problem. If a problem arises requiring a recount, the paper ballots come into play.
