[Fsfe-ie] perspective on e-voting

[Niall Douglas]

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On 1 Mar 2004 at 10:20, David O'Callaghan wrote:

> Do you have evidence that mobile phone polls would increase turnout? A
> recent study in the UK found that the only measure to increase turnout
> was traditional postal voting. I'll see if I can dig up a reference
> later...

None. It's pure personal opinion.

> The trust we need to do ecommerce is fundamentally different to the
> trust we have in elections. Trustworthy ecommerce transactions *must*
> identify the parties involved so that the buyer can get his purchase
> and the seller can get his money. Trustworthy evoting transactions
> *must not* identify the voter, but still allow the voter to verify
> that his vote has been recorded and the election supervisor to verify
> that each voter only has one vote. So it's quite possible for a system
> to be trustworthy for ecommerce (as you seem to suggest 5G phones will
> be) but not suitable for evoting.

I had more been thinking that a phone appealing for commercial 
transactions will have enough onboard processing power and memory to 
implement any secure application eg; evoting. Put it this way - 
penetration of PC's into the population at best is no more than 25%. 
Mobile phones blew that away within their first decade and thus are 
the future platform for delivering computing to the masses.

I should add that I've never voted and won't be voting next election. 
I view it as pointless given that the media exercise a far greater 
control over politicians than the ballot box. Furthermore I know no 
one of my age group or of my younger sister's group who have ever 
voted, nor have any intention to ever do so.

Let's face it - rich people don't vote. Ireland is rich now, 
therefore only old people vote like only old people go to mass 
regularly. OTOH if they shut down the country on election day like in 
Australia, I might consider it - otherwise I have more important 
things to do.

Cheers,
Niall





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