Secure and Verifiable Voting System (from the inventor of eCash)

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/11/25/213206.shtml?tid=103&tid=126&tid=172&tid=99

meese writes "The cryptographer David Chaum, through discussion with top cryptographers such as Ron Rivest, has designed a secure and verifiable voting system. One of the goals of his design is that anyone can verify that votes were tabulated correctly. It's good to see real security/crypto people working on this problem. They also have a press release."

From the press release (http://www.vreceipt.com/):

Receipts showing exactly who you voted for—just what people want and generally expect these days—have been outlawed to prevent vote selling and other abuses; now a scientist has come up with the first receipt that cannot be abused and additionally ensures that the vote you see on it is actually included in the final tally.

The new type of receipt is printed in two layers by a modified version of familiar receipt printers. You can read it clearly in the booth, but before leaving, you must separate the layers and choose which one to keep. Either one you take has the vote information you saw coded in it, but it cannot be read (except with numeric keys divided among computers run by election officials).

The half you take is supplied digitally by the voting machine for publication on an official election website. These posted receipts are the input to the process of making the final tally. A lotto-like draw selects points in the process that must be decrypted for inspection, but not so many points as to compromise privacy. Anyone with a PC can then use simple software to check all such decryptions published on the website and thereby verify that the final tally must be correct. Such audit cannot be fooled, no matter how many voting machines or other election computers are compromised or how clever or well-resourced the attack.

The cryptographer, Dr. David Chaum, known as the inventor of eCash and for his pioneering company DigiCash, came up with the system.

...

[Eric J in MN]

1. most states won't require any type of paper ballot

Sounds like a good idea, but the touchscreen machine manufacturers don't want their flaws revealed, and they will fight this idea tooth-and-nail.

Most states won't require any type of paper ballot for touchscreen machines unless Congress passes the Voter Confidence Act.

To anyone who hasn't done so already: please email your Congressperson to support the Voter Confidence Act with the link in my signature.

[pansypoo53219]

2. This American life did a great expose on diebold.

so by next year, we should have it hit the rest of the media. the sheeple shall dewmand paper reciepts!

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

3. it's a start

This gets around a lot of their excuses.

[alfredo]

4. Yeah, great article.

Diebold didn't can't even put printers on their machines. Poor helpless capitalist.

[lysergik]

5. One big problem with this system.

Chaum may be great with mathematics and crypto, but I think he's going to miss the boat because he isn't seeing the big picture.

Luckily someone is seeing the whole picture, the Open Voting Consortium (OCV) http://www.openvoting.org

They are currently developing an open source, completely secure, disabled-persons usable voting system that will be a very potent solution. They have some very smart people working on the development of the project and will have a very broad and talented board of directors to ensure success. So far they have the BEST solution currently available from anything I've seen thus far.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

8. www.openvoting.org

Thanks for the link, that sounds great.

[CarinKaryn]

6. Great Idea

We must tell the citizens how vulnerable they are to having their vote stolen. This method is easily verifible and should be implimented.

[lysergik]

7. We've been spreading the word like mad..

..everyone at verifiablevoting.org and blackboxvoting.org as well as the other BBV activism groups that have been spreading the word and educating the lawmakers and letting companies like Diebold know that we won't stand for their untrustworthy systems.

But Chaums system should not be implemented, see my post above as to why. Receipts don't cut it. We NEED voter verifiable paper ballots and nothing less.