It is something of an overstatement to say that an effective defense is
virtually impossible. It is possible in principle for each voter to get
a digital key pair and digitally sign his ballot in a way that would
authenticate him and also insure the ballot does not get altered, while
maintaining secret ballot standards. The entire voter registration list
would have to be digitally encrypted to prevent ballot stuffing by
fictitious voters. That would only leave the problem of someone looking
over the shoulders of voters to unduly influence the way they vote, so
the system would still need to have voters use voting booths where
their votes could not be observed by others. Such booths could be made
conveniently available everywhere, or even brought to voters unable to
get to them otherwise.
Needless to say, doing all this would be an enormously complex process
that would be difficult for most voters to grasp. On the other hand, we
are probably going to have to do something like that for personal
identification generally, using not centralized identification systems,
but a digital notary system based on circles of trust. This could lead
to a situation in which most people are digitally connected, but a
substantial part of the public is left unconnected, digital
"nonpersons".
See
National ID or
circles or trust?
A
Proposal For Using Authentication Services
Own
Your Privacy: Privacy and Security Are Not Antithetical
On 10/06/2010 09:09 AM, Candice Hoke wrote:
Effective defense virtually impossible
-- Jon
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Constitution Society http://constitution.org
2900 W Anderson Ln C-200-322 Austin, TX 78757
512/299-5001 jon.roland@constitution.org
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