E-Voting Undermines Public Confidence In Elections

Techdirt columnist, Timothy Lee, hit the metaphoric nail on the head, claiming that e-Voting undermines the public perception of election fairness - even when there is no evidence of wrong doing. "In a well-designed voting system, voters shouldn't have to take anyone's actions on faith. The entire process should be simple and transparent, so that anyone can observe it and verify that it was carried out correctly. The complexity and opacity of e-voting machines makes effective public scrutiny impossible, and so it's a bad idea even in the absence of specific evidence of wrongdoing." Add to this the possibility technical faults, conflicts of interest and evidence of tampering, how long before the US vote is viewed as an electronic pantomime?

Isn't that the point?

[tqft]

So not too many will think they are losing much when real elections just stop happening?

"That's what the computer said so it must be true".

Or even better "We read the result on the internet so it must be true"

Re:

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yup.

And yet, a five-year study...

[buzzardsbay]

... by three leading universities says exactly the opposite is true: http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Government/Study-Claims-Electronic-Voting-Security-Usability-Fears-Overblown/ [baselinemag.com]

Re:

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Funded by...

These studies seem to analyse the concept - without vulnerability testing of specific machines and their particular configurations. Nor were actual breaches of custody and handling operations investigated.

This has been done by Matt Blaze, and by Bev Harris and the BBV team.

Re:

[buzzardsbay]

That may well be true. But the study wasn't refuting the claim that there are security problems. The study refutes the premise in the original post that electronic voting undermines voter confidence. It does not. In fact, despite all its problems, it IMPROVES voter confidence. Reason? Places like Chicago and Boston and New Orleans have been proving for two centuries that paper ballot elections are quite easy to rig.