[lbo-talk] Re: internet "insecurity"

[Curtiss Leung]

That misses the point.  If you have physical ballots, 
you have something you have count in case of a dispute.
Sure, someone can still tamper with either the software 
used to record the votes or the database holding them.
If it's done subtly enough that no one thinks to contest 
the vote, then the physical ballots won't matter.  But
if it's not--or if you're just plain ornery enough to 
challenge--you've got something to fall back on.

Curtiss, wondering about the handling of physical
ballots....


>> Me:
>>  The pathetic
>> thing is that it would be relatively simple to add a
>> small printer to these systems that would print out a
>> paper ballot that the voter would approve and then dump
>> into a bin, thus keeping a physical and auditable record.
>
> Jon:
> OTOH, I saw someone pointing out somewhere the other day that if you 
> can jigger the voting software, you can just as easily jigger the 
> software controlling the printing operation so that it prints out a 
> hard copy that *looks* as though the vote the voter cast is the one 
> being recorded, when in fact something completely different goes 
> through the system.