Friday, July 21, 2006
computer scientists speak out on e-voting
After the 2000 US presidential election and its scads of hanging chads, election officials across the country began casting about for solutions. One proposal included getting rid of those pesky paper ballots altogether and going with electronic voting machines. It sounds good in theory, but as a friend of mine once said, "do that and we'll find out who hackers want to be president."
A group of computer science professors are joining the forces critical of electronic voting machines as they are currently deployed. Eugene H. Spafford, a computer science professor at Purdue University and chairman of the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery has expressed his concerns over the security of electronic voting machines used in the US. "As experts in computing, we have grave reservations about the safeguards in place with many of the computerized voting technologies being used," said Spafford in a letter to Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), chairman of the Committee on House Administration.
Ars Technica - Computer scientists weigh in on e-voting - July 20, 2006
