I often say that election security is by far the hardest technical problem I've ever encountered. Why? Four reasons:
1) Contradictory critical requirements, particularly vote secrecy vs. transparency.
2) No truly neutral trusted third parties.
3) Election do-overs are generally impossible, so the ability to merely detect problems is insufficient. You have to reliably prevent them.
4) Much of the technology than can manage the complexity of elections is inherently untrustworthy.
The only good solution I know is to have a physical box, have everyone check that it's empty, have all the ballot papers put in the box by voters while everyone watches, then shuffle the papers, then take them out and count them while everyone watches.
Oh, it's an issue if you have to *move* the box.
Ideally the counting is actually done in the same room where the voting was done, with the watchful eyes of all the party observers and everyone else on the box the whole time. So no "seal" issue.
Well, that's high praise!
Thanks. I'll assume you mean that entirely legitimately.
I agree with you that election security is a very hard problem. Largely due to needing to implement the secret ballot. That's why this extraordinarily low-tech solution is the most reliable one I know of. :shrug:
Matt Blaze
Nathanael Nerode
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