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

[Craig Simon]

To reiterate what I wrote when this discussion was raised in an earlier 
thread:

... where formal public law-making and officer-selecting elections are 
concerned, I'm not an advocate of Internet voting in particular, or of 
electronic voting in general. I agree with those who argue that a system 
of physically auditable records marked by the voter in a secret manner 
(which we might call the "Hard Australian Ballot") promises a far more 
legitimate account of voter desires.

...By putting aside (for now) the daunting but critical challenge of 
pristine legitimacy, it's possible to address other important ones... 
namely, how to facilitate a style of mass, diversified participation 
that can effectively build consensus around valuable ideas.

++++

So, it's clear enough that the system I've been developing is indeed 
flavored more like a computer science project than an immediate solution 
to the hard problems of online voting. Nevertheless, it's a project with 
a very practical intent.

Successful online-based democracies will need fair, scalable venues for 
debate and discussion at least as much as they need secure election 
processes. The system I've been developing is designed to enable online 
democracy in the sense of a town hall, caucus, Indaba, or Loya Jirga, 
where opinions are rendered in public and decision-making is an open 
process.

The goal is to build a set of tools that members of large online 
communities can use to: 1) gain the best possible awareness of candidate 
options being raised within their communities, and; 2) build consensus 
around the preferred candidates.

The project I've got in mind requires many pieces. One is already in 
operation as a ranked choice voting system that provides an interactive 
ballot and a rich visual display of results in real time. Please feel 
free to try it out at http://apps.facebook.com/we-vote/

Thanks for your interest,

Craig Simon

Paul Lehto wrote:
> 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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> 
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