Electronic voting is history
Today a group of people advised our government to stop using the electronic voting system we used up to now.
They advised to use a different system of voting: let the people make a choice on a computer, print that choice on a piece of paper, put it in a box and count them at the end of voting period.
Until the system is ready we will probably vote with pen and paper. I’m very happy for this decision, not only because the voting computers we used up to now did not have a paper trail, but they contained closed source software.
Unfortunately in the US (specifically the State of Florida) we are still using some type of electronic vote – I wish they would go to a system more like what you’ve described, as this would help to insure those doing the counting wouldn’t have a ‘hanging chad’ issue or (like last state congressional vote) they had a series of ‘crashes’ of the electronic voting stations….
In Belgium we have, for several years now, electronic voting.
And it works very well.
The software on the computers is completely open source.
When you register to vote, you get a magnetic card (like a credit card), put it in the computer, vote and put it into a container.
At all times, when you still have the card, you can recheck your vote.
This is as secure as a paper vote.
At the end of the day, there is still no way to recount the votes, is there? Especially not without having to rely on the same system again. You can not see with the naked eye what the vote on that magnetic card is.
That the software is open source is irrelevant since you can not check that it is actually that software that is running on the machines, let alone that that software has been compiled with an uncompromised compiler.
As I fail to see what problem electronic voting really solves, I don’t see the reason why one should introduce intricate schemes to make it sort-of save anyway. It is a non-solution for a non-problem.
Open Source wouldn’t help that much in this case, as soon as people have access to the hardware, they could install another software, and then the original software can be open as anything, it wouldn’t make the whole voting process more secure.
We here in Estonia use an over the internet electronic voting system. Everyone has a personal electronic ID-card and can submit their vote from anywhere in the world by using an application that creates an encrypted vote that is put into a digitally signed envelope that is sent over the internet to the vote forwarding system that validates the signature, strips the envelope and forwards the vote to the counting system.
There is an English overview available of the technical details.
A seal doesn’t help either. You still have to trust the person that puts the seal on there. e-voting is really a non-solution to a non-solvable non-problem. ;)
Anyway, congratulations from Germany. We still have to get rid of our laws that permit e-voting. :)
Well, the computer is sealed.
It doesn’t contain any drive either.
Seal broken? Vote again.