Re: Defining a trusted voting process

[sibain@tendotzero.com]

David.

This looks good. I would put in here a few points which in the UK have been highlighted with postal ballots again this week.

Elected officials from one of our major political parties have been accused of "Ballot Stuffing". That is going to people and saying "Give us your ballot and we will post them for you". Hmmm gullible the people maybe. Trusting yes, scared or just very naive? Whatever the reason it would seem that it has happened. So I think a method to overcome this would be vital. This is not an issue with postal ballots as much as ballots being cast in a non public place. Somewhere that an individual is not open to abuse, coercion or threats. But that is I am sure for a different group in a different organisation.

As far as this is concerned In the UK in May 2003 we had the users posted with 2 separate login credentials, if they had opted to use e-Voting. This seemed to work well, and meant that any interference was kept to a minimum as users had no knowledge of these login credentials prior to the ballot starting. I also think that the postal ballot should not hold any user identification. But only the actual candidate voted for. This should be in a bar coded form which is machine readable and not human changeable. Verification could then be carried out anonymously and any discrepancies easily brought to light in a given ward or election area.

This would not stop people trying to rig ballots, but it would make it more difficult, as there would be no way in the postal ballot of an individual knowing who the voter has voted for.9Stopping any intimidation) They could still of course offer to post the ballots and not do so. However by doing this the discrepency would be highlighted by the dual count and also highlight the wards that have problems with ballot rigging and allow the authorities to act quickly and rerun any ballots where necessary. One or 2 "non posted" would not show and so these people would lose their ballot however 1 or 2 thousand would be very noticable, and quickly.

All the best
Simon