[Changing the subject line because this is a change of topic.]
On Thu, Sep 12, 2019 at 8:37 AM <shogunx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
IMHO, if the interest is in protecting the democratic process, the first
place we should look is the digital voting infrastructure, as that is the
vector most abused. Knowing what I do about network and computer security
in general, I have come to the conclusion that hand counted paper ballots
with a strong chain of custody are the only way to ensure a free and fair
election.
This is pretty off-topic for IETF, but might be interesting to people.
I certainly agree that software independence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_independence) is a good objective for voting systems, and hand-counted paper ballots are one good way to achieve that. However, there are voting environments where they are problematic. Specifically, because the time to hand-count ballots scales with both the number of ballots and the number of contests, in places like California where there a large number of contests per election it can be difficult to do a complete hand-count in a reasonable period of time.
One good alternative is hand-marked optical scan ballots which are then verified via a risk limiting audit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit). This can provide a much more efficient count that still has software independence up to a given risk level \alpha.
-Ekr
Scott
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