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Re^3: Larry Wall for President! (or at least voting systems in Perl...)by Ytrew (Pilgrim) |
on Nov 03, 2004 at 18:11 UTC ( [id://404961]=note: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
Egads, no. The last thing you want in a polling place is a shredder. You want a big envelope with big black letters saying SPOILED BALLOTS, and an election judge should supervise the voter as they put their spoiled ballot into it; then the voter is given a new one.
At least that's how it worked last night, when I was an election judge in Hennepin County, MN. You must still somehow ensure that no one ever looks in that envelope. Otherwise, it may be possible to determine how someone voted from the spoiled ballots. For example, suppose that there are only 3 spoiled ballots, all of which are for one candidate. Now, everyone who saw those three people put their ballot in the envelope knows how they voted. This violates the right to an anonymous vote. To prevent this, the invalid ballots need to be destroyed somehow. If they aren't, someone might read them. You could wait until the end of the election, then shred or burn the envelope, but it still needs to be done. However, if the voter is allowed to shred his own invalid ballot, then he doesn't have to hope that no one will look in the envelope when he leaves the room. The main requirements must be that: (a) no invalid ballot can ever be viewed by anyone other than the voter, and (b) no invalid ballot gets cast as valid. I'm again relying on the large, dangerous men to prevent elections tampering, including any deliberate shredding of valid ballots. That should be obvious: they're in a separate box, far from the shredding machine. It occurs to me that a more dangerous issue with all computer/electronic based systems is the risk of a hidden logging system. It would be easy to sneak in a section of code (or a custom set of electronics) that only activated on election day. It could secretly record that a vote took place at a given time, and who was voted for. It could be hidden as part of the debugging code, for example. With the timing information in hand, you'ld then just need to keep track of what person voted at which time. An observer at the polls with a watch and notepad could do that part. By cross referencing the time with the person, you now know how everyone voted.
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