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Are E-Voting Paper Trails A Bad Idea?
from the depends-on-your-point-of-view dept
News.com is running an interview with Carnegie Mellon CS professor Michael Shamos, who is rather opinionated about everyone who keeps pushing for a voter-verified paper trail in e-voting machines. He thinks that a paper trail is a bad idea, but his reasoning is a bit problematic. Most of his complaints are around the fact that paper ballots aren't particularly reliable either (which no one denies). But that, alone, isn't a reason to get rid of a paper trail. After all, the idea is that the paper trail is a backup -- a way to check and verify that the electronic votes are counted correctly.
From there, Shamos complains that various voting laws say that if the e-voting totals and the paper totals don't match up, you have to use the paper totals. To him, that's a problem because (as he pointed out) the paper totals are not particularly reliable. But, again, the problem here isn't actually with the paper trail, but the laws that automatically ditch the e-voting result, rather than specify a way to verify what the real vote total is.
Towards the end, Shamos does make some good points about how the real focus should be on building a system that does end-to-end verification for reliability, so that people can feel confident that their vote was counted correctly. However, he falsely accuses supporters of paper trails of not being interested in this. That's simply inaccurate for the most part. Almost every expert on the subject that you talk to wants a better overall e-voting system that is more secure, accurate and reliable. Having a verified paper trail isn't meant to solve all the problems, but as a temporary solution for an obvious problem with current e-voting machines. Yes, we need a better overall system, and, no, paper isn't perfect -- but Shamos seems to be accusing the paper backup supporters of stuff they're not saying.
