Electronic voting with free software

[Alan Dechert]

"Ben Finney" <bignose-hates-spam at and-zip-does-too.com.au> wrote in message
news:slrnbhma55.si4.bignose-hates-spam at iris.polar.local...
> On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 00:54:34 +0200, Ulrich Petri wrote:
> ><snip voting with computers>
> > Sorry but why on earth you dont just print that on paper and let
> > people make their crosses where they want?
>
> To give benefits that paper ballots can't provide.  E.g. allowing people
> to vote over the Internet who can't get to voting booths, removing the
> human element of transposing ballots to a database, possibly reducing
> double-voting, etc.
>
Several studies concluded that remote unattended Internet voting poses some
very thorny problems (especially voter identity).  However, these studies
have also said there is no reason attended Internet voting could not work.
Our project incorporates a proposal for Remote Attended Internet Voting to
replace the various existing absentee voting methods employed today.

> The FREE project was developing GNU.FREE software for electronic voting;
> development has since halted, but they have a lot of articles resulting
> from the development activity:
>
Kitkat, underestimated the size of the problem on the technical side.  He
never started to look at the politcal one which is much larger.  It is
axiomatic that everyone that jumps in to solve the problem underestimates
it.

The team I am putting together is getting a handle on the technical side as
well as the political side.  We have a ways to go yet.

Alan Dechert