Prometheus 6   

Computer voting

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/12/politics/main562983.shtml

…Voters using SERVE can register to vote and cast their ballots from any computer using Microsoft Windows with Internet access. Local election officials will use the system to process voter registration applications, send ballots to voters and accept voted ballots instantly. Long delays in counting absentee ballots, a factor in the disputed 2000 presidential election, would be relegated to the past.

Security remains the top concern for the system's coordinators and fodder for critics.

"I think Internet voting is a good idea for this population if you can assure security, but I'm not confident that they can do that," said John Dunbar, a project manager at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan government watchdog group. "It wouldn't take much for some smart hacker to send around a virus that lays in wait for someone to issue a vote."

Other computer security experts call the project an open invitation to election tampering.

"We're opening up a whole host of opportunities for voter coercion and voter fraud," said Rebecca Mercuri, a research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who specializes in studying electronic vote tabulation.

Mercuri said even the most secure systems can be cracked, hacked or left vulnerable to Internet viruses, leaving the ballot contents and the voter's identity open to perusal.

"If we have this going on in commerce and all other transactions on the Internet, why would people think we can avoid it in voting?" she said. "This is just an experiment that's doomed."

posted by Prometheus 6 at 7/14/2003 11:58:59 AM |