Via emperor http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30976610
I wish articles wouldn't conflate every sort of e-voting. I have very different views of:
1. MPs allowed to vote in absentia -- since the votes aren't private, risk of shenanigans seem a lot lot lower, basically a good idea.
2. Jumping straight to allowing remote electronic voting without even a cursory look-over by a security expert -- I have no idea why anyone even contemplates this it seems criminally irresponsible. We have a pretty good voting system, let's not destroy it on a whim?
(Likewise, using electronic voting machines in polling stations produced by partisan companies, with no oversight from all parties or election officials, that are trivially hackable, seemed an obviously bad idea, I don't know how it happened.)
(Although, I would be interested to see what the possible trade-offs were, if it were designed by somebody competent.)
3. Investigating ways of using electronic vote counting in polling stations -- extreme caution, but possibly worth investigating, because the convenience is definitely something people want, and it would be good to have actual pros and cons, not just "NO". I agree there are lots of risks and I'm not eager to explore it, especially if it's conflated with #2. But it seems like you could make machines which were sufficiently simple they couldn't boot off SD cards, and had oversight from representatives from all parties (as elections do currently), and it might be worth trying??
I wish articles wouldn't conflate every sort of e-voting. I have very different views of:
1. MPs allowed to vote in absentia -- since the votes aren't private, risk of shenanigans seem a lot lot lower, basically a good idea.
2. Jumping straight to allowing remote electronic voting without even a cursory look-over by a security expert -- I have no idea why anyone even contemplates this it seems criminally irresponsible. We have a pretty good voting system, let's not destroy it on a whim?
(Likewise, using electronic voting machines in polling stations produced by partisan companies, with no oversight from all parties or election officials, that are trivially hackable, seemed an obviously bad idea, I don't know how it happened.)
(Although, I would be interested to see what the possible trade-offs were, if it were designed by somebody competent.)
3. Investigating ways of using electronic vote counting in polling stations -- extreme caution, but possibly worth investigating, because the convenience is definitely something people want, and it would be good to have actual pros and cons, not just "NO". I agree there are lots of risks and I'm not eager to explore it, especially if it's conflated with #2. But it seems like you could make machines which were sufficiently simple they couldn't boot off SD cards, and had oversight from representatives from all parties (as elections do currently), and it might be worth trying??