E-Voting: The Right Framing...

Looking at the volume and passion of response to my previous diary, I would venture that any 2008 candidate that brings this issue forward as a key one in his campaign (as both a symptom and a cause of how the average American has been politically and economically disenfranchised) will attract a groundswell of support from the netroots.  

The question is how to frame the issue.  I think there is a simple way, and it was suggested by many respondents to the previous diary.  Follow me below the jump...

By way of background, I should say I am an IT Architect with 25 years experience, with a good amount of experience with financial systems.  I have worked with a wide variety of technologies over the years, and am well versed with many more--including some very similar to most "smart card" based e-voting technology.  A company I used to work for used that technology over twenty years ago to implement a lottery for a Latin American country where telecom was unreliable.

I profoundly distrust e-voting technology.  Here's why.

Anyone who works with financial systems can tell you that the technology, by itself, is not secure.  You can add all the encryption, authentication, verification, etc. and it can still be hacked.  What ultimately makes the financial system viable is two things: audit trails and auditing.  

Using that as a standard, e-voting falls way short.  The hardware is easily tampered with, the software easily hacked, and the physical security of devices is almost non-existant.  But the most damning thing is, no audit trail and no audits.

Many respondents to the earlier diary mentioned ATMs in the responses, and I think this is precisely the standard we should use in framing this issue.  If money machines can be made secure and trustworthy, then voting machines can be made secure and trustworthy.  Part of this is in the hardware design, part of it the software design, part of it is the logistics (fixed installation with telecom, which facilitates better control over physical security) and part of it is the systems behind the ATMs that batch and process transactions.  But ultimately, it is the audit trails and the auditing that keep your bank account safe.

The beauty of this frame is its simplicity and the fact that is instantly comprehensible in a single sentence:  "If money machines can be made safe and trustworty, voting machines can be made safe and trustworthy."