I saw something on www.vote.com, I believe, that asked people their feelings about voting via computer over the Internet. I took a tour years ago through the San Francisco mint and was shown a huge scale that they used to weigh gold, coins, etc. It was a weight-counterweight type - not electronic, although they had access to electronic ones - and was the preferred type to use because it couldn't be easily mishandled or misconfigured.
I think the voting method is similar to this. Look at all the accusations (well deserved, IMNSHO) flying after the hand recounts. People have an interest in who wins; machines don't. And if we were to move toward some method of electronic voting, how can we secure that so that there is no question - ever! - of tampering? I don't think it can be done. Someone would have to program the ballots, and who's to say s/he wouldn't use political bias to throw in some code that "accidently" dropped every third vote from the opposing party? Also, circuits certainly aren't tamper-proof. A few years with Pacific Bell taught me that Joe Farmer can backhoe an OC circuit in nothin'-flat, knocking out entire communities.
I agree that the current mess sucks, but I don't think we networking professionals will be called in to fix it until we can produce a magic box that is completely tamper-proof and transmits over quarks.
Until then, just mail all your ballots to me and I'll fill 'em out right for you. =)
- Don
-----Original Message-----
From: Priscilla Oppenheimer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2000 7:14 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: O/T ballots-per-second musings
Has anyone figured out the ballots-per-second (bps) transmission rate for
the ballots that travelled in a Ryder truck from Palm Beach County to
Tallahassee? &;-)
Seriously, do we recognize how ridiculous this situation is? With current
technology, the data should have arrived in seconds. We seem to have
scraped by the year 2000 without any major disasters caused by Y2K bugs.
However, the year 2000 election is a victim of ancient, buggy punch-card
readers. I call this the E2K problem.
The punch card readers in Miami-Dade County were unable to detect a vote
for president on 10,000 ballots. That's outrageous! Regardless of any
political wrangling about the significance of this problem, as computer
professionals, we should be asking ourselves, how could this happen?
We now have two kinds of proof (Y2K and E2K) that we need to take a more
active role in working with our users to dump ancient systems and upgrade
to newer and less buggy solutions. That's not an easy task, of course.
Finances, office politics, and risk aversion are just some of the many
reasons that users don't upgrade. But what are we doing to be more
proactive? Are we monitoring our systems to determine their fragility? Are
we taking action when we recognize potential problems? Are we designing
reliable systems that can adapt to changes? Or are we hiding behind our
21-inch monitors and praying that nothing bad will happen on our shift?
I'd like to see the computer industry get serious about developing less
buggy systems and upgrading legacy systems that are failure-prone. I'd
welcome a technical (non-political) discussion on this topic. Thanks for
listening to my ravings. &;-)
Priscilla
________________________
Priscilla Oppenheimer
http://www.priscilla.com
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