Subject: Re: internet voting -- ICANN, SmartInitiatives, etc.

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 14:23:29 -0500

In message <[email-masked]>, Ed Gerck writes:

>
>Bugs, however, can be either fixed or avoided.
>

This is the fundamental point where we differ -- the former is 
difficult and itself bug-prone, and the latter is impossible in a 
system of any realistic size.

		--Steve Bellovin, http:/www.research.att.com/~smb

---

From: Ed Gerck <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 15:25:53 -0800

> system of any realistic size.

I thought we would differ on how to treat bugs and I am glad we agree
(so it seems) that bugs are not the electronic equivalent of chads.

In other words, hanging/pregnant/dimpled chads are a problem we
cannot solve because they lie at the analog/digital interface and
represent the digitization error.  But bugs are a problem we can
deal with without any fundamental law that says we cannot reduce
them.  The first problem regarding bugs is, of course, that we do
not (usually) know what or where they are.  This is another difference
to chads, because we know very well what and where they are.

Handling bugs is the major problem IMO (looks like we also agree here)
after DDoS, privacy, security, integrity, etc are handled (which are
not a small task, either).  But this might not be so hard after all.  Yes,
an election is a mission-critical application but it is also a fixed application
if you design it well with a database paradigm. The database changes
for every election (candidates, offices, etc.) but the software is the same
at each different stations (registration, voting, ballot box, tallying,
reporting, auditing, etc.).

And, elections already use software -- even if you just use punch cards.
So, this is NOT a new problem either.  In fact, it is worse today because
it all closed source software (in the good name of security).

This is thus another point for open source and peer review of election software,
as I presented to the FEC and at the IVTA, and frequently suggest.  My
article "Reflections on the August 11th FEC Meeting" was published in The
Bell of September 2000, together with two other articles on open source
for Internet voting by Thom Wysong and Jason Kitcat. A copy is
available at   http://www.thebell.net/archives/thebell1.5.pdf

Cheers,

Ed Gerck