Opinari.net
Opinari - Latin term for Opinion. Opinari.net is just what it seems: a cornucopia of rants, raves and poignant soliloquy. |
Monday, October 27, 2003
Newsweek's Steven Levy cites the biggest problem with direct recording voting machines - the votes cannot be verified.
After you punch the buttons to choose your candidates, you may get a final screen that reflects your choices—but there’s no way to tell that those choices are the ones that ultimately get reported in the final tally. You simply have to trust that the software inside the machine is doing its job.
Levy also interviews a professor and computer security expert at Johns Hopkins who tells him that "anyone in (his) basic security classes would have done better" and calls the system "far below even the most minimal security standards."
I'm as much a techno-geek as anyone else, but I can certainly see the flaws in the technological solution. I'm not so sure we want to embrace technology until all of the wrinkles are ironed out, and clearly, they aren't. Although more elegant solutions are being developed (like verifiable voting, which prints out the vote as a receipt), I would feel most comfortable with an old-fashioned paper ballot, and making sure voting precincts are small enough, and have enough officials on hand to determine the accuracy of the votes.Labels: Archives_2003
.: posted by
Dave
12:14 PM
| |
Recommended Reading
|
