In Quotes
August 2nd, 2007 by Jeremy Clark in : SecurityWhile this was written during the last cycle of discovered exploits in electronic voting machines, John Allen Paulos hit the nail on the head,
Elections and electronic voting machines invite consideration of the following thought experiment. You go to your local voting station, walk into the booth, pull the curtain, and see a well-dressed man standing inside with a little note pad. He asks whom you’re voting for, appears to record what you say in his note pad, tells you he’ll add your vote to his running total, thanks you, and asks you to send the next voter into the booth. Whatever objections you have to this voting scenario should be reserved for the more familiar one involving Diebold and other voting machines.
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:47 am
Yea, but he also says:
“You wouldn’t make a deposit at an ATM machine whose screen opened to reveal a well-dressed bank official who thanked you for your check and assured you he’d put it into your account”
The analogy is lame, because you DO trust the “guy in the suit” because you have independent verification of your bankaccount… you can balance your checkbook yourself to check if suit dude ran your transaction.
August 3rd, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Well, I think what he is getting at is that you generally get a receipt that proves you did indeed make the transaction. Even if you were independently verify that it worked, why would it matter if you couldn’t prove a mistake had happened?
August 5th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Aleks: the analogy that you misquote specifies not being able to balance your account as a condition of not trusting the guy at the end of the sentence!
August 6th, 2007 at 9:46 am
His ATM analogy is given to directly support the concern over “proprietary software and no independent paper trail” in voting.
However, you DO have an independent audit trail in the case of a bank account.
Given that you know your current balance, the transaction you’re initiating, and the amount its for… then it doesn’t matter what clothes the transaction function wears as long as it performs it correctly, something you and your stubby pencil can ensure.