Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [Politics] Tom DeLay gives it up

[McIntosh Jason <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Apr 4, 2006, at 10:12 AM, Mike Miller wrote:

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It's pretty amazing and wonderful to think that a change to a fairer voting system, one that allows more real choices and let's Rick Buford have a shot, can actually completely alter our political landscape.  It would happen overnight as soon as we implement a Condorcet system.  Why hasn't this been done before?  It is used in small elections, but you have to use a computerized system if there is a large number of voters.  We have to get a good secure, open-source voting system working.  After that, we can change to Condorcet and reap the benefits.  Read about it and promote it in small elections, e.g., in your workplace, in high schools, etc.

Mike

I was thinking of this a while back, trying to find a good "open" voting solution using commputerized/electronic voting methods.  The only solution I've come up isn't a diebold system, but something else like this:

Use electronic voting, which upon completion prints out two receipts.  One receipt goes in as an "official" ballot.  You can check this out yourself, see the results.  This is where "officials" are elected from.  However, your electronic vote gets stored in a database, and is used to validate the paper vote.  This electronic vote also MUST be able to be verified online in an open way.  Call it a generic, unique ID for your vote (i.e. concept of a sequence number).  You can go online to a website, and type in the sequence number off of your receipt to make sure your vote is valid.  There would be no identifying information on the vote (a CRITICAL feature in my view), nor would the number be tied to a person in any way.  It's just a generic "vote number XYZ".  

This system would support a number of checks - including the basic check of a) making sure the vote, both paper and electronic were counted correctly, b) reducing some of the overhead and making it easier for a person to vote, and c) allowing a way to publicly verify your own vote.

Thoughts on this?  (As a note, I came up with this idea while back, but the two paper receipts, one for the official tally, the other for your own records is a new idea).

Jason

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