Punchscan incorporates cryptography into e-voting
By Darren Murph 
posted November 6th 2006 10:21AM
posted November 6th 2006 10:21AM
Considering the disaster that has been e-voting, we're not surprised to see another firm stepping forward with a slightly less complex alternative to confidently casting your ballot. Reverting back to the less problematic methods of paper-and-pencil voting, yet offering up a way to electronically store and track each vote, David Chaum and his research team have unveiled the Punchscan system to hopefully solve the world's e-voting woes. The cryptographic solution involves a double-sided ballot which is split into two halves using a hole punch, giving you one side to take home. The "receipt" reportedly doesn't disclose which candidate you voted for, and allows you to logon once home to verify that your vote was indeed cast, and cast for the intended party. So if you're worried that your hard-earned vote may be heading to File 13 rather than being counted, maybe you should start politicking to get Punchscan going in your neck of the woods, and if you're still confused about how this two-faced encryption dealio works, just peep the video, yeah?[Via Slashdot]
You know, on the surface, this seems like the most feasible system to date. You get to track your vote, it's digital, it's analog.
However, who is going to secure the website? How is one centralized system going to track your vote for you? How easy is it to get who voted for who data, so that 'bad things' can happen to those who 'voted badly'.
I don't normally have a doom-gloom syndrome, but the future scares the shit outta me.
Its funny that you have doom and gloom syndrome for the future. I am not so much scared of future as much as the present. Its funny how we trust digital systems with our money but we don't trust it with voting. All be it for good reason. But I think once these things are tested/proven the 5th or 6th generation of these systems it will be 2 steps forward and 1 step back as allways with technology.
We trust digital systems with our money because there are simple processes to apply if there is a problem: if someone fraudulently used my credit card to buy stuff on the web, I tell it to my bank, they refund me and they investigate. If someone fraudulently replace my vote, the president will not be replaced by the one for whom I voted.
Banks have a very strong security. They can track any transaction made with a debit/credit card. Of course, they know no security measure is 100% safe, which is why they have processes if a security breach happens.
The problems with e-voting until now is that you cannot track your vote. An entire votes database can be reprogrammed in a matter of seconds at the end of an election day without anyone noticing.
That can also happen with money transactions, but banks put a lot of effort into securing their systems and even then, they admit it can fail. When confronted with the evidence their software and hardware can be deceived very easily, companies that make e-voting machines deny everything, or say that maybe, possibly, if they have time, they will make an update within the next 30 years. That's what's scary with e-voting
Waitaminute... Isn't the video missing an important step? Like, how does the election department know what's on your ballot? Before you leave the polling place, shouldn't you SCAN your ballot on an election department scanner?
I have been saying this for years.
It's a great idea, and the simple fact of the matter is that while a website can be hacked, it's not a secure way to chnage the vote for the simple fact that there are millions of little paper reciepts out there that can be hand identified by people who KNOW who they voted for.
Now we just need to worry about counterfeit receipts. Let us all pray that N.Korea's not going to jump into counterfeit ballot bussiness, I heard they are the leaders of this techonolgy... :P
Jan Kok -
Silly! Of course its scanned.