[governance] Internet voting and work of Craig Simon of this list

[Paul Lehto]

Dear Mr. Simon, Does your work address some of the preliminary
objections and concerns in the links below?  If it dispenses with
them, I'd be particularly interested in reading what you have to say
in your links below (though I'm not saying I won't in any event)

The fundamental, and a very fundamental difference indeed, between a
typical computer science project and internet voting is that (a) the
interests of the participants in voting are wildly diverse and
contradictory, especially considering that a valid election is
necessary to replace an incumbent and incumbents typically control all
of the electino laws and rules, thus lacking any real incentive to do
it right, and (b) the voting for democratic purposes must be
transparent (except for one's own private or secret ballot) and,
unlike the typical corporate context, the insiders are a much greater
threat than even employees in banks are for embezzlement (the #1 theft
risk in nearly all businesses) because elections determine the power
and composition of the government, yet are run by governments or their
direct designees, creating an intense conflict of interest.

The links to the internet voting reports, or one of them plus its
follow up, are below.

Paul Lehto, Juris Doctor

A report written for the Air Force about their SERVE system, Jan 2004.
"A Security Analysis of the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting
Experiment (SERVE)" Co-authors are Dr. David Jefferson, Dr. Aviel D.
Rubin, Dr. Barbara Simons, and Dr. David Wagner. The points are still
valid according to everything I've heard or the authors are aware of.
The same web page also includes a link to "The new report in response
to the May 2007 DoD report on Voting Technologies for UOCAVA Citizens"
http://www.servesecurityreport.org/


On 10/19/09, Craig Simon <cls at rkey.com> wrote:
> If you folks actually do start discussing scalable online democracy in
> practical terms, please keep in mind that I've been taking concrete
> steps on this.
>
> There's still a very long way to go, but you can experience the current
> prototype on Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/we-vote/ .
>
> This project is a direct consequence of my Ph.D. research on the DNS
> governance debates (see http://www.rkey.com/essays/diss.pdf ).
>
> Craig Simon
>
> Roland Perry wrote:
>
>> I would conclude that you weren't interested in discussing practical
>> democracy, just the theory. Hey, I'm an engineer at heart; I like
>> talking about practical solutions.
>>
>>  >Please excuse me if I'm wrong, but I just get the abiding impression
>>  >you're not really serious about furthering democracy if you're not
>>  >upset with ICANN right now...
>>
>> I've repeatedly said I'm not implying any opinion about ICANN (either
>> positive or negative) as a result of this discussion with you.
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-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box #1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026
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