[ale] hack challenge for electronic boting system

[James P. Kinney III]

On Mon, 2003-08-25 at 20:47, Transam wrote:

> In the case of the old punched card method, many people ensure the physical
> security of the cards.  This prevents substitution.  The cards can be
> recounted and re-inspected by all interested parties ad infinitum.  This
> constitutes an audit trail, i.e., a way to verify that there was no
> unauthorized alteration of the data.
<snip>
> Nobody has the opportunity to watch the votes being counted because it
> is just electronic signals.  With the punched cards, in an extreme
> situation, each political party could run the cards through its own
> equipment and validate the accuracy of the vote counting.  You may even
> have noticed that each punched card had a serial number and that the
> number on your stub (that you got to keep) matched what was put into
> the "box".  Thus, votes and people even could be matched up after the
> fact, if necessary, for people willing to provide their stubs.

I tried (unsuccessfully, obviously) to get the powers that be to merely
change the way the punch cards were punched. By modifying the puncher to
be a sliding arm device that aligned with the candidates name in a box
then the card is punched with a die that provides success or failure
feedback (a light blinks green when the tool is all the way through the
card) would have eliminated all of the problems associated with the
Florida Fiasco. Now, use the cards to get a printed record of each
voters choices by inserting the card into a reader with a screen. That 
one device is the ONLY electronic device. It does read the card and
record the vote, but it also still has the card as the original ballot,
plus the approval of the voter on the accuracy ("hit the big red button
if this is wrong. Hit the big green button if this is correct") produces
a printed receipt with card number, choices, time stamp and record
number. The cards are then run through the usual card punch counter
machines and the tally compared with the one at the precinct machine. 

It was a LOT less expensive, kept a good audit trail, had multiple
checks along the way, didn't take all the existing systems to the dump,
ran an open source environment on the local counter for easy, public
verification. 

But the powers that be were not taking cues from the little engineer
types, just the sales force with $$$.
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 

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