Honest Voting

Here’s something I didn’t expect to see anytime soon: someone knowledgeable who feels the state of election technology is actually improving. Aviel “Avi” Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, has badmouthed electronic voting systems for years — in 2006 he wrote a book called Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting, which heavily criticized e-voting machines for security and reliability shortcomings.

However, as more and more states switch to paper records and voter verified ballots, Rubin’s view has brightened. Todd R. Weiss interviewed Rubin on electronic voting and the 2008 presidential primaries for Computerworld earlier this month — you can read an edited version of the interview here.

Here’s Rubin’s response to those who poohpooh concerns about voting security and auditability:

I would ask those people if they would be willing to allow their bank accounts to be unauditable. And if they would be willing to forgo monthly statements for their bank accounts that show where the money came in and where it came out and if they would give up on getting any confirmation of their ATM transactions.In my opinion, votes in this country are just as important as money, but we have the anonymity requirement so we can’t get a monthly statement about our votes and who we voted for. So we need to have a system that accommodates the ability to audit to be sure that the machines got the right result.

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