Further musings on the need for VVPAT...

["David Webber \(XML\)" <david@drrw.info>]

More from the Vote Here discussions today.

Here's what I compiled to support the need for paper
in an all digital process involving DREs only!

DW

1) You cannot have an anonymous trusted verifiable computer
    process. eBanking works because it is not anonymous.
    Every eProcess out there gets to know your email
    address or account ID to send a confirmation
    somewhere in the process.  If it does not send a
    confirmation - then you have no verification - the
    DRE is thus reduced to an entertaining arcade
    gaming machine - for which you have no
    guarantees to actually what reality is.
    That theoretical stumbling block is key to 
    understanding the need for a verifiable paper record
    in anonymous voting systems.

2) Voters need trust (and US Gov HAVA demands it).  
    Paper is the most trusted mechanism everywhere. 

3) The banks have a trusted process that handles
    billions of paper cheques annually.  Their error rates
    are infintesimally small.  These technologies are
    simple, proven and secure.  We need to base a
    trusted voting process around such crosschecking
    and accounting methods.  There will always be 
    enticing exotic proprietary and uncertified and 
    potentially compromisable technologies offered
    up - but a trusted process needs to be simple
    and obvious.

4) We need to develop open public specifications
     so that there is an open marketplace for solution
     providers.  This is the lesson of railways, telephones,
     automobiles and electricity.  The software industry is
     no different.