[PLUG-TALK] Online voting: Bruce Starr's thoughtful "flipflop"

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sun, 2 Mar 2014 18:14:14 -0800
Keith Lofstrom <keithl at gate.kl-ic.com> dijo:

>http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/02/oregon_internet_voting_study_s.html
>http://tiny.cc/orivote

An observation first. The website of the Oregon Secretary of State was,
indeed, hacked. However, no one lost a penny and the only repercussion
was that the site down for a couple of weeks. This inconvenienced me
and many others, but stuff happens. This was not Target with millions
of accounts compromised.

As for internet voting, it could probably be made secure. You start by
making it impossible to edit a vote. When the vote is cast no hacker
can change it. The accounts and passwords are another matter, but since
everyone is entitled to vote only once per election it is not a huge
problem. If I go online to vote and the site says I have already voted,
clearly someone has hacked the usernames and passwords, and the
secretary of state is going to hear about it, toot sweet.

A more important issue is voting for those without internet. This
afternoon I received a call from tenants who reported that their
furnace had gone out. (Aside: Why do these calls always happen on a
Sunday?) The problem was that they were unable to figure out how to
program the thermostat. I had left the owners' manual with them, but
they had lost it. I inquired if they had a computer and an internet
connection, but they had neither. I had to go home, download the
owners' manual from Honeywell, and drive back to the house to give it
to them.

These are good people. They deserve their voice to be heard. I assume
that any internet voting scheme would include alternatives for those
without a connection or a computer.