Prof. J. Alex Halderman Tells Us Why Internet-Based Voting Is a Bad Idea (Video)

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On March 2, 2012, Timothy wrote about University of Michigan Professor J. Alex Halderman and his contention that there is no way to have secure voting over the Internet using current technology. In this video, Alex explains what he meant and tells us about an experiment (that some might call a prank) he and his students did back in 2010, when they (legally) hacked a Washington D.C. online voting pilot project. This is, of course, a "professional driver on closed course; do not attempt" kind of thing. If you mess with voting software without permission, you might suddenly find the FBI coming through your door at 4 a.m., so please don't do it.

TLDW;

[vlm]

Too Long Didn't Watch; I don't watch video in general. People who can't express themselves in words certainly can't express themselves in video either.

I would assume a much simpler and cheaper and safer way to corrupt internet voting is to internet vote under the watchful eye of your supervisor at work, or the watchful eye of your head of household at home, or maybe your local church could provide internet access to vote, or ... You could work around that bug by bringing internet access to the local elementary school gymnasium (they've probably already got wifi like our schools), placing some superannuated citizens in charge of what to them is incomprehendible technology (in other words anything newer than IBM unit record apparatus from pre-1930), maybe replacing those complicated internet kiosks with a simple paper form and pencils and an instantly reading/verifying optical scanner.. oh wait thats exactly what we have now where I live. Hmm. Sounds like a big waste of money for everyone except the people getting the money... who happen to be campaign donors.. Oh, I see whats happening here.

Idea..

[backslashdot]

Is it really a bad idea? This is just the opinion of some researchers, so why don't we vote on it online and see?