On Friday 21 November 2003 12:19, Tim May wrote:On Nov 21, 2003, at 8:16 AM, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is expected to announce today that as
of 2006, all electronic voting machines in California must be able to
produce a paper printout that voters can check to make sure their votes
are properly recorded.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me- shelley21nov21,1,847438.story?
coll=la-headlines-california
Without the ability to (untraceably, unlinkably, of course) verify that
this vote is "in the vote total," and that no votes other than those
who actually voted, are in the vote total, this is all meaningless.
Quite true. But given the fact that we don't have that ability *now*, what
exactly is the difference? Other than streamlining and centralizing the
present distributed corruption?
The point being that this "electronic voting" is just "syntactic sugar," superficial glitter.
None of the interesting and robust foundations from crypto are being used.
(Not that I am necessarily advocating this.)
For the next ten years there will be endless babble on television about "the revolution of electronic voting," when in fact it's just a g-job to give voting machine companies some new business.
--Tim May
