On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 02:55:19PM -0500, Barney Wolff wrote: > On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 12:45:41PM -0600, (Mr) Lyn R. Kennedy wrote: > > > > Seems there is still a problem unless each eligible voter brings a smart- > > card, warm finger, eyeball, etc. > > This is a perfect example of what I'm complaining about: You're holding > electronic voting to a much higher standard than you are paper ballots.
If it's not a higher standard then it violates the "If it aint broke, don't fixit" rule. But I'm concerned about "KISS" and "the right tool for the job" more than anything. > Perfect is the enemy of better. We do have to take care that electronic > voting does not introduce new and catastrophic vulnerabilities. Other > than that, it merely has to be better (and no more expensive) than the > best existing systems. Unfortunately, there is a trend toward more complex systems as a solution to everything. Families of firefighters who died in the WTC collapse would probably have been happier if they had the old low-tech radios from 20 years ago rather than whiz-bang gadgetry that failed. There was no plan to fall back on since politicians believed the salesman who told them it wouldn't fail. And the proposed fix is more complexity rather than the right tools for the job. This is what happened in the Florida elections as well. "Upgrading" the voting systems was the problem, not the solution. More complex machines add to the number of failure modes. I'm in favor of using modern technology. But I don't want to move to electronic systems just to make some salesman happy. Modern technology and public-key cryptography seems to offer some real advantages to verifying eligibility, one-person-one-vote, and vote- whever-you-are but many such issues are not even addressed. Passed over in favor of making money for voting machine companies. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 73, E-mail | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Lyn Kennedy webpage | http://home.earthlink.net/~lrkn | | K5QWB ICBM | 32.5 North 96.9 West | ---Livin' on an information dirt road a few miles off the superhighway--- --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
