Pentagon Cancels Internet Voting System 350
Ben B writes "The Pentagon won't use an Internet voting system for overseas U.S. citizens this fall because of concerns about its security, an official said Thursday. The official, who requested anonymity, said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz made the decision to scrap the system because Pentagon officials were not certain they could 'assure the legitimacy of votes that would be cast.' Computer security experts who last month reviewed the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or SERVE, had urged the Pentagon to scrap the system, saying it was too vulnerable."
I really have to question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I really have to question (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I really have to question (Score:4, Interesting)
But hey, it could have been worse. They could have voted for Bush.
Re:I really have to question (Score:2, Informative)
BTM
Re:I really have to question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I really have to question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I really have to question (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is if I root your computer and thn you register to vote, I simply block your vote from leaving your computer, fabricate my own packets and send them along. you'll never know because voting methods require that they can't be traced back to you. If someone can prove that you voted for a certain candidate then people will start being paid to vote for certain candidates As long as you
Re:I really have to question (Score:2, Interesting)
The system just has to be designed `right'. With possibly 10 different open source implementations (implemented by different teams/companies) working as one... (have the client machine talk to 10 different gov servers at the same time - each running it's own implementation), and their results compared. If any one of them is not `correct', then t
Re:I really have to question (Score:5, Insightful)
No you can't. People concentrate on encryption strength as if that's everything. It's like the height of a wall. Doubling it doesn't help if people can walk around the wall. The key length is only one of many vulnerabilities in a system. Think of all the computer security breaches you've heard about. How many happened because an attacker succeeded in brute forcing a key? As opposed to, say, using an easily guessed default password? Unless you're using DES, or crappy exportable encryption, brute forced keyspaces are probably not how you will go down.
What you have here is something that is pretending to be a solution to a problem that is pretending to be a solution in search of a problem. There are really two problems here- the one you are addressing (short key length), and a more fundamental one, which is that there is no reason for we the voting public to be hearing the words "Internet" and "voting" in the same sentence at all, nor is there any reason why we should have to assume a collective responsibility for safeguarding our own votes in this election process when we weren't even the ones who had anything to gain from endangering the democratic process in the first place.
Re:I really have to question (Score:3, Interesting)
But not the confidence problem.
The problem with SERVE is that it got caught in the crossfire from the Diebold issue. It is an easier target in some ways because people are used to ATMs, they are less used to the Internet.
There is a big difference in the two problems, with Internet voting it is much easier to perform one off frauds that afftect single votes. You can trojan a machine if you k
Not the voter anonymity problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Only by having the voter go in alone in a booth to vote out of sight of everyone else can that be assured.
Re:Not the voter anonymity problem (Score:3, Interesting)
In my native Sweden absentee voting has to be done either in a post office or a foreign embassy or consulate. In either case there is a an enclosed private area to do your vote in, and an employee that makes sure anonymity procedures are followed.
I've lived in the US for 9 years, and it's fairly shocking how sloppy the voting system is here. It's not really hard to design a fool proof system, if you actually try. It costs a little more money, but come on, it is the entire pow
Re:I really have to question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I really have to question (Score:5, Insightful)
How in the world would the U.S. react if you could reasonably argue that the system could have been hacked, etc. -- Strikes me that this would be a very chaotic result.
The Internet based system does not and probably cannot have a useful audit trail that is equivalent to the paper ballots.
Foreign nationals are certainly limited in their voting flexibility and I think the Pentagon was trying to incorporate them betting in the voting process. Is there not a reasonable compromise that would meets the needs of voters and voting integrity?
Re:I really have to question (Score:5, Informative)
"...George W. won all of the recounts, including ones done by the independent press..."
Actually, not to get into the argument of whether there was a fix or not, but the independent press tally came up with different winners, depending on how the vote was counted.
Ironically, using the counting method that the Democrats recommended would have resulted in a Bush victory, and using the counting method advocated by the Republicans would have resulted in a Gore victory.
But then the Supreme Court stepped in at the Republicans request, called off the recounts, and gave the victory to Bush. So the proper counting method for the recounts became a moot issue.
Re:I really have to question (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah... after the Democrats took it to the courts to begin with.
Neither party's hands are clean in the whole fiasco.
Re:I really have to question (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah... after the Democrats took it to the courts to begin with.
Neither party's hands are clean in the whole fiasco.
I hope you aren't saying that it was somehow wrong to take that election to court. That's the reason we have courts -- when everything else breaks down, they are the final arbiters of right and wrong. They are the referees that determine which rules are just and how they should be interpreted and enforced. You can't have a truly democratic system without a powerful court because those abused by the tyranny of the majority have no recourse. As for the case of Gore v. Bush, it looks like the court failed. It didn't fail because Bush won (though I would have prefered Gore), it failed because in a situation that needed a conclusive end it rendered the worst possible verdict for the sanctity of democracy in the United States. They said that a recount should happen, but becuase of an artificial deadline ~50 days before the winner would take office and less than a day after the decision, a full recount requiring less than a week would just be too inconvenient to endure. The case should have been about how to count the votes, with the democrats arguing one way and the republicans arguing another. Instead, the republican council argued that there should be no recount at all... As a litigation tactic, this was good -- if you won the first count, argue against any subsequent recounts. As it concerns the country, though, this was a horrible argument, and a less radical court would have seen the importance of deciding the election with a universal standard of fairness rather than doing what it did. The Gore v. Bush decision may have been the single worst supreme court decision since the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, but at least in Scott the court had a sound legal principle to support its decision.
Anyway, I can't believe you're claiming the democrats should somehow be blamed or tarnished for seeking a recount in an election where equal protection had obviously been violated. The fact that such a request even made it into a court should tell you that the republican party, at least at the time, cared more about being in power than it cared about the democratic nature of the united states or its constitution.
Re:I really have to question (Score:3, Insightful)
"I hope you aren't saying that it was somehow wrong to take that election to court. That's the reason we have courts -- when everything else breaks down, they are the final arbiters of right and wrong."
Well, there is a Constitutional process documented, yes, right there in the Constitution, that throws the election into the House and Senate in the event of a contested slate of electoral votes from any particular state.
If your going by the Constitution, the recount should have proceeded and, since whicheve
Re:I really have to question (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that's why we have the military--they're the final arbiter when everything else breaks down. Fortunately, it has only once gotten to that point, and hopefully it never will again. The courts are the last peaceful recourse, but there are others available.
Re:I really have to question (Score:4, Interesting)
And you do realize that the Republicans were planning on suing for recount after recount if the original count had gone against Bush, even if it meant keeping it in the courts for months? Were they getting ready to whine?
What happened was a neocon takeover of the election process, no more no less. If the election had gone against Bush, recounts would have been sacred. Since it went to Bush, they demanded all recounts stopped.
And you do realize that Bush had demanded at least one, maybe two, recounts in other states at the time the Florida recount was being hijacked? Recounts were fine in OTHER states. Just not Florida.
And there was no problem in counting the votes. A major privately funded recount was conducted during the late part of '01; the results were misreported and supressed by the very news organizations that sponsored it. Because of 9-11, they thought it unwise to baldly state that Gore won, if all votes, including "overcounts" (people who both punched and wrote in Gore's name) were counted.
By all standards but one, Gore won.
Bush issued the ultimate takeback when Scalia and the other neocons stopped the recount. He had lost.
Re:I really have to question (Score:3, Insightful)
But, you know, here in the US, we use an electoral system that grants presidential votes depending on how the majority voted in each given state.
Interestingly enough, the electoral system was developed as a compromise to allow slave states a greater say in choosing the president.
No doubt, you've heard of the 3/5 compromise. The one that declared slaves, in particular black men, as 3/
Re:I really have to question (Score:2)
Re:I really have to question (Score:2)
If you're going to allow the "divining the voter's intent" game (that is, try to detect hanging/dimpled chads) as Florida did, and the number of ballot that need
Re:I really have to question (Score:2)
LEFT------GB------RIGHT
Most people when they think about politics expect it to maybe be more like this (showing a case where Bush would win):
LEFT---G----B-----RIGHT
The actual result is the same as very simple economic theories such as "where to put your resturant along the road to compete with other resturants". They all end up clustered
preference deals (Score:2)
we have that in Australia. It leads to the profound uglyness called preference deals where the Pro-life/anti-union/aspirational voter people walk up to the black/gay/dredlocked/pro-healthcare/greenie/anti- w ar people and say "I'll put you as number two on my 'how to vote guide' if you put me as number two on yours, but if you say no deal I'll put the White Supremecist/Ul
Re:I really have to question (Score:3, Interesting)
This mandate is spelled out clearly in most states (ironically, including Texas) and makes perfect sense. For a real world example, a ballot is issued with the holes misaligned. Just lookin
Old ways (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I really have to question (Score:4, Insightful)
as if there is any real need for this anymore. i've never understood why people want to still keep this secret.
In Soviet Russia, they shot people who voted against the wishes of the Party.
I'm confused.. (Score:2)
Re:I really have to question (Score:2)
Worst. Soviet Russia. Joke. Ever.
Re:I really have to question (Score:5, Insightful)
Secret ballots prevent many problems associated with elections (breaking the legs of those who don't vote how you told them, for example). Of course with non-compulsary voting you can perform similar attacks anyway - prevent a bunch of people who will cast more votes for your opposition than for you from voting at all.
The UK has a system in which votes are tagged with unique identifiers that match a voter to a ballot - but the link is locked away somewhere "safe" and legally can't be accessed except on a court order and are destroyed after a year. That provides most of the benefits of a secret ballot, but still allows the votes to be checked if the election is suspect. See here [hart.gov.uk] for a short blurb on the system.
Now whether than system is good or bad is another matter, but it shows you can have some of the benefits of a secret ballot and also the main benefit of a non-secret ballot.
That's nice. Does it finally kill the idea? (Score:5, Funny)
Online isn't necessary. It's already happening. (Score:4, Interesting)
They do that already.
With motor-voter you can crank out as many registrations as you want. (There's an illegal immigrant on my street who brags about how he goes from precinct to precinct on election day and shows off his >20 registrations. His reaction to questions about whether this is right: "They don't care. If they cared they'd do something to check.")
Don't expect any respect for law from people who grew up in a country where the government is totally corrupt (let alone the subset that then broke OUR laws to even BE here, rather than going through proper channels.) It's not their fault they grew up in that environment. But now that their opinions are formed you'll need to do more than set an example, if you want to get their attention and change their behavior. And you're not going to do that while it's ILLEGAL to review their elegibility, or even check their ID.
(Now think about how the "drug war" and the 55 MPH speed limit have similarly affected the Boomer generation's respect for law and established institutions.)
Think it's hard? Think they do any checking? Heck. *I*ve been double-registered twice in the last few years. (Changed my party affiliation - which is done on the same form - and had my name typoed and the form misprocessed as a new registration. I STILL get double jury-duty notices from the last instance.)
To motor-voter add no-excuse absentee ballots. Now anyone can:
- pick up a stack of forms in any government office,
- crank out fake voters as fast as he can fill them out and drop them in a mailbox,
- file for absentee voting as fast as he can check a box on the registration notice postcards and drop THOSE in a mailbox, and
- never have to show his face at a polling place.
There was one address in Berkeley that had over 4,000 absentee ballots in a recent election. (Tried to claim that they were a mail drop for some street people. 4,000 of em? Yeah, right!)
Then there are the ballot boxes that are found floating in the San Francisco Bay when there's an election in San Francisco.
And cheating on mechanical and electronic vote-counting, without audit trails, is nothing new. You've all heard about Diebold's touchscreens. But the vote counting a few decades back was done on minicomputers, by proprietary software, where you could pause the program and tweak a register from the front panel switches (and election officials were sometimes seen to do that).
Even mechanical voting machines had opportunities for cheating: It was common to find little stickers in the bottom with "0000" on them - the trace of a voting scam. The wheels would be set to a non-zero value and covered with a sticker. Lock the machine, let the official certify it's zeroed, put it into service. One vote for the stickered candidates knocks the stickers off.
Internet voting isn't necessary for election corruption. It just simplifies automating it.
Re:Online isn't necessary. It's already happening. (Score:3, Interesting)
With motor-voter you can crank out as many registrations as you want. (There's an illegal immigrant on my street who brags about how he goes from precinct to precinct on election day and shows off his >20 registrations. His reaction to questions about whether this is right: "They don't care. If they cared they'd do something to check.")
This sounds like some Rush Limbaugh FOAF. It doesn't make sense. An illegal immigrant got twenty licenses? From your state DMV? With 20 different addresses?
Why trust internet banking then? (Score:5, Insightful)
I must be missing something - this is technically feasible, they are just doing it the wrong way.
Re:Why trust internet banking then? (Score:5, Insightful)
hashes? (Score:2)
I'd rather risk extortion than have my vote stolen. Are you listening, DIEBOLD?
Re:Why trust internet banking then? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why trust internet banking then? (Score:2)
I think the Bush team did a pretty good job of insuring the last presidential election.
Re:Why trust internet banking then? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. You are missing something. The fundamental problem with internet voting is that it needs to be able to assure three things:
First, that the person voting is eligible to vote. This is not too hard to do. We know how to verify identity, though there are a few issues with this that are not present in a financial relationship.
Second, that the person's vote is anonymous. Anonymous voting is trivially implmented. There is a problem when you combine the above verification requirement with the need to keep a given person's vote secret.
Third, that the election be auditable. THere was yeling and finger-pointing in the last American presidential election. Could you imagine what it would be like if votes just suddenly marterialized out of the ether with no way to audit them?
Combine all three of the above requirements and you have a very tough problem at hand. We don't want to be able to have some political hack analyze the raw vote data and b able to say "Joe Blow voted for candidate X, as this could, for various reasons result in repercussions of one kind or another on Joe, thus allowing others to intimidate his vote.
This is one reason why I really dislike mail-in ballots. Mail ballots allow an agent of Party y to hand an absentee ballot to Joe, make sure he marks for the 'correct' candidate, and then mail it in, assured of the vote rendered. It is a also a sitation custom made for fraud on a massive scale. With in-person voting, party X can pay Joe $5 dollars to vote, but when Joe deposits the ballot in the box, there is no way to guarantee that Joe voted "correctly".
Now, there some bright fellows have proposed cryptographic protocols that solve the problems mentioned above. Unfortunately, you are dealing with an electorate too stupid to figure out how to punch holes in a ballot reliably. The Protocols for secure, anonymous internet voting are far too complex to ever be used in the real world.
Re:Why trust internet banking then? (Score:4, Interesting)
Mind you, I also believe Internet voting should be used to allow people to vote on the issues throughout the year, assign proxy votes and basically allow democracy to be dynamic -- rather than this thing we have currently where you're stuck with some arsehole for four years and have no way to affect decisions on issues you actually care about.
Re:Why trust internet banking then? (Score:4, Insightful)
With the internet voting system there is that same critical step - after it verifies you and it assigns you that highly encrypted 'pass for one vote', you then trust the system to keep your details private (maybe with a 2nd key that only you know).
It's the same thing - you have to trust the system for *any* type of voting to work.
Re:Why trust internet banking then? (Score:3, Insightful)
I
Re:Why trust internet banking then? (Score:2)
Yep, that's probably the real reason. Which is a pity - I'd love for the results to be declared...
"Cowboy Neal - WFT?"
Can't this be fixed? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Can't this be fixed? (Score:4, Funny)
OMG! You solved the problem! And in one sentence too! Could you tackle spam next? Thanks.
Re:Can't this be fixed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can't this be fixed? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Can't this be fixed? (Score:2)
If the spammer BCC's the one email to millions of people, his server only needs to host that one spam, not millions.
Re:Can't this be fixed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can't this be fixed? (Score:2)
Re:Can't this be fixed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Christ, wouldn't you? Your average user has problems when they get those nasty letters from MAILER-DAEMON, and some ( my mother ) even get offended that they use such a vile name ( deamon ).
So no, we are not ready, technically or socially, for internet voting.
Aww (Score:3, Funny)
From a non-expert perspective (Score:5, Funny)
I'm glad they've dropped this idea.
Re:From a non-expert perspective (Score:4, Funny)
I've been in twist ties handcuffs before and I can assure you they are VERY SECURE.
Re:From a non-expert perspective (Score:2)
Re:From a non-expert perspective (Score:3, Funny)
I hope you're confusing twist ties with zip ties.
Re:From a non-expert perspective (Score:2)
Re:From a non-expert perspective (Score:2)
This issue doesn't apper to be closed after all (Score:5, Informative)
This more complete article [yahoo.com] has a quote that suggests this issue really isn't closed after all:
Wolfowitz's memo, written to David Chu, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, allows the Pentagon to continue work already in progress to look into "other technical applications for voting on the Internet or electronically," the defense official said.
"The door is still open to other methods. It's just that the SERVE we have decided not to use," he said.
Big problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see how this got so far already.
Re: (Score:2)
E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more (Score:5, Interesting)
Today I drop my ballot in the mailbox (I live in a mail-in ballot state) and just have to trust everything is on the up and up from there.
What I would like instead is to have every voter to get a receipt when they vote, that uniquely identifies their precinct and vote, and shows a unique number for that vote/voter combo. Something like:
Vote #: 54353654354 Precinct: 58 Voted for: Mickey Mouse (or whoever)
Then I'd like those all those numbers published somewhere after every election so that anybody can download it. Note that my vote is still anonymous, nobody knows who vote 54353654354 is because of the nature of one way functions.
Any voter could go look at the published list to see that their vote was counted correctly. If it was counted incorrectly (I.e. the count showed my vote to be for Dopey instead of Mickey Mouse), then I could step forward with my biometric data to prove it. If enough people step forward, the election was clearly bogus and needs to be redone.
Any voter could download the entire list and count the votes for themselves, at least minimizing the chances of large #s of votes appearing out of thin air in any particular precinct, and making counting of votes very clear and open to all to verify.
Is it foolproof? Nope, but it is a lot more transparent process than we have today, where I have no visibility whatsoever into my vote being counted, what the real totals where, etc.
Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice try but its not acceptable.
Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more (Score:2)
Would probably need to factor in what the person voted as part of the nonce they got. I.e.:
Nonce = hash (person's biomentric data + precinct + how they voted), perhaps signed with the private key of the voting machine.
Probably not a good idea to network that voting machine, because that opens it up to cracking to get that private key - and it isn't really needed. Just have it spit out all the voting info (nonces + how they voted) after the election is done.
Internet voting i
Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more (Score:2, Insightful)
You sign the actual ballot? Or a security envelope? In Washington, you sign a security envelope that contains your ballot. Once the signature is verified and the ballot is removed, there is no way to tie the ballot to the person unless the person opening it made some sort of record of it and/or your votes. That of course would require a conspiricy of epic proportions, no?
Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more (Score:2)
A signed security envelope is traceable only if the vote-gather apparatus is compromised.
Both require some level of trust. Neither is foolproof. But at least with the proposed system it has the advantage of beng able to verify that your vote was properly counted. Today we don't have that at all. Precinct guys are all demos and repubs? Too bad libertarians (or greens, or whatever), your ballo
about time (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering all the snafu surrounding the Diebold screwups, I think it's a good thing that the pentagon is finally listening to common sense instead of possibly covering up another voting screwup.
I'm from florida and the whole previous presidential election never sat well with me because of the morons we have down in south florida and the fact that we never really knew the truth about the actual voting results.
security is not the problem (Score:2)
S.E.R.V.E (Score:4, Funny)
Good call (Score:3, Interesting)
Not just hackers/terrorists but I am sure some tech savvy candidate might even go the length and 'hire' someone to do it for him/her. That would give a whole new meaning to the term *booth capturing*.
I am glad Pentagon got it right before getting the system in place. Voting is not like the weather forecast. There is an 80% chance that we counted the votes right. No. We want to know the right tally. I can wait for the paper trail to be counted instead of electronic voting giving me the result instantly without 100% reliability.
Re:Good call (Score:2)
I can wait for the paper trail to be counted instead of electronic voting giving me the result instantly without 100% reliability.
This is a compelling argument in favour of the electronic system; however, hand-counting introduces a whole different problem because it requires hands, which are generally attached to people. And people are assholes.
Since the Bush Vs. Gore in Florida issue has already come up many times, I'm going to use a different example: the Quebec sovereignity referendum in Canada duri
Secret ballots? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Secret ballots? (Score:3, Funny)
See, thats why the porn star didn't win the California election.
What do you have to hide (Score:2)
When people design a new system without specifiying the requirements clearly, they always forget something important like this.
Thank G (Score:3, Insightful)
There is little to be gained by it anyway. Apathetic and lethargic Americans will still come up with some excuse not to vote.
The money could better be spent berating these pinheads, or funding voter vans, or introducing legislation to take away privelliges from non-voters.
I think most of us feel that online CC transactions are usually safe, but we take the chance because most of the time we don't get burned (save eBay). Our CCs usually have a loss-limit protection of $50.00. My vote is more precious than $50.00.
Besides, if it was Internet-wired some politician would enact some crap legislation for last-minute pop-up adds that looked like OS dialog-boxes, thereby tricking hasty and myopic people into voting for the wrong candidate.
Good call (Score:5, Informative)
Electronic voting at polling places could be implemented securely, but it would be VERY difficult to make a secure voting system that meets all of our (US) requirements and runs over the Internet.
Re:Good call (Score:3, Insightful)
The pentagon counts votes??? You must be kiding. (Score:3, Insightful)
Military voters (Score:2)
Re:The pentagon counts votes??? You must be kiding (Score:5, Informative)
The Pentagon has an interest in this because these votes are the overseas ballots for the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces. The Pentagon's job is to make sure there is a reasonable way for their people to get a say in the government back home. They are not involved in the vote tally itself. This is just the Pentagon saying that this method is not acceptable to them. A legitimate and sane response, given the known security risks.
For once... (Score:2, Funny)
good riddance (Score:2, Funny)
Interested in putting together a panel in NYC (Score:4, Insightful)
My concern is that any system be appropriately thought out, formally and precisely defined, using rigidly designed systems (not necessarily off-the-shelf), made to precisely and verifiably conduct voting tansactions, without being able to disclose, leak, or bleed any information that is not supposed to escape the system.
The Johns Hopkins study is an excellent reference and resource on the issues that have to be addressed.
I am personally interested in setting up a panel in New York in Mid-July (not much - just about an hour), but at an interesting venue. I am not offering funding, but there could be some visibility.
I would welcome hearing from anyone who is doing interesting work in this area - in the US or overseas, that would be interested in participating on such a panel, to include related topics on technology-and-democracy.
Sam Nitzberg
sam@iamsam.com
http://www.iamsam.com
Electronic Voting? Easy (Score:2, Interesting)
Not secure?
Ever tried to hack into a bank?
Re:Electronic Voting? Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever notice those stickers on banks saying "Insured by FDIC"? Ever see on on your ballot?
Banks can plan for a potential hack, elections are more of a one shot deal.
Internet does have a limited use (Score:3, Insightful)
IN SOVIET RUSSIA (Score:2, Funny)
But... (Score:2, Funny)
Trusted Computing can help (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Trusted Computing can help (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm with Cringely on this one (Score:3, Interesting)
Run the numbers on why it needs to be anonymous (Score:5, Interesting)
In the present day there are millions of voters and we have very good methods of criminal science and investigation to deter lawbreakers. (Now this may not be relevant to regional elections as the number of voters as well as imperative to dissuade criminal activities are lessened.)
SO if someone did want to buy off an election how much would they have to spend to get even 2% of the vote? The CIA factboook says there are a little over 290 million people in the USA, around 60% of whom are of voting age... minus inelligibles, lets say 45% just to be safe, that's a little over 130 million people, lets say that 10% actually vote.. 13 million. 2% of that is 260,000 people for a presidential election. I don't know anyone who'd sell their vote for $10 but just for the hell of it... that would cost 2.6 million dollars to buy 2% of current voters. Now if you brought in all the non-voting but elligibles... the chances are greater that more people would sell their votes but the percent of total voters would change accordingly, meaning that the more voters there are, the less an individual vote counts, so it would take even more money to buy 2%.
Granted that 2.6 million isn't a lot compared to how much the candidates or their parties spend already... but it is illegal, so they would have to somehow pay off that number of people for that large sum of money AND hide it all from the government, the people, the media, etc.
This assumes that people would be willing to commit fraud a federal crime for $10 and risk going to federal prison for any number of years (I don't know the penalties).
As far as extortion goes, extortion is a crime. How many lackeys are really willing to put pressure on people for this? Knowing that they personally can't possibly convince enough people to make a difference.
The question is... do we really need an anonymous vote in the present day? SO what if your friend give you a hard time, you probably already tell them who you voted for anyways and already suffer the ridicule or whatever. We have anti-descrimination laws already on the books that could be extended to cover this as far as your job or any other official relationship is concerned.
Why not have your vote tied to you? The biggest drawback I can see is that you'll open yourself up to election related spam and direct mail campaigns every 4 years.
I'd like to hear about other real concerns and why we still need anonmous voting. bring it.
I have an even bigger question... (Score:3, Interesting)
Peace
I want to implement online voting for our party (Score:3, Interesting)
www.neteffect.org.au
with the intent of using the internet to allow members to vote on policy formation etc.
I want to do this using open source software, whether we build it ourselves or not. Surely there exists a group of programmers out there who together can craft such a system?
I think it could be one of the most important examples of how open source benefits the greater good if we could pull it off, and the flow on effects could be enormous since it would be open for anyone to use across the globe. I'm more than willing to make our political party site the home of it if you are interested.
Come on Slashdot, if we as a group of geeks can't solve this problem, what hope is there that anyone else will?
You are welcome to post in our forum about such a system, and download our Constitution which lays out the rules we plan for online voting, so please have a look at what we're hoping to accomplish and see if it can indeed be done successfully.
Admit it (Score:5, Funny)
Just imagine all the quotes he'll leave for posterior.
RTFA (Score:2)
Because we are talking about the voting process being designed for overseas military members. Clear now?
Re:Pentagon??! (Score:2, Flamebait)
- A lot of absentee military ballots were at the center of the controversy in Florida in 2000 so someone in the DOD probably decided we needed to make sure the military could reliably vote.
- The U.S. military has its troops scattered farther afield than they've probably been since World War II at least. The administration probably wants to make sure all the troops vote, perhaps assuming they will go
Re:Is that the real reason... (Score:2, Interesting)