Benlog

Though I don’t think paper-trail voting machines will fully solve our voting problems, I agree with many voting activists that today’s unverified voting machines are a potential security disaster waiting to happen. That said, it’s become clear to me (and many other voting researchers) over the last few years that non-computer-scientists see the world [...]

On election day for the last 4 years, I try to put aside my political preferences and my incessant blabbing about voting equipment, and I work as an election clerk at a polling station. In 2006, I worked as a precinct warden in Boston, and before that as an election clerk in Boston and Cambridge. [...]

The governator on how to improve voter turnout.

Thanks to the interesting site Why Tuesday?
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How can I not link to this?

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… the New York Times publishes a huge story on voting machines. To their credit, this is one of the best pieces I’ve seen to date, assuming you accept that these major publications simply refuse to talk about open-audit voting.
Some great lines that mirror what I’ve said in my own talks:

Part of the problem stems [...]

Just before Christmas, I was invited by my friend and colleague Steve Weis to give a talk about voting with cryptography at Google. I’ve done about 10-15 talks of this kind, but this was a fun challenge: a very talented audience with an introductory understanding of cryptography (Steve had given 3 prior lectures on cryptography). [...]

Vote By Mail in California

While we’re struggling to secure voting machines, a number of States are deploying “Vote By Mail Permanently!” Here’s a picture on a bus in the San Francisco Bay Area. What a nightmare.
I suspect that, for some election officials, the appeal of vote-by-mail is a bit [...]

The Swiss have implemented quantum cryptography to transfer votes to a central tallying authority. This is pretty cool, and I applaud the Swiss for trying new technologies to improve election security.
However, marketing this as “unbreakable encryption” is troubling. I can’t help but see this as a version of Gene Spafford’s warning writ large:

SSL is like [...]

[With apologies to my grandmothers, some of the most insightful people I've known.]
When you want to build a publicly accountable secure system, must you build to the lowest common denominator? The key example is, of course, voting. It’s clear that you have to build the user interface to the lowest common denominator: given minimal direction, [...]

Republicans in California are trying to split the electoral votes proportionally in time for the 2008 elections. They say it’s “more fair.”
Are you kidding me? Seriously? Is this the level of lying that we’re dealing with now? Obviously, it’s only fair if all states do this. If only “blue states” do this, or if only [...]