discussion in yahoo group in 2012

2012

Sreekar HDec 26, 2012

Hello,

I just came across this mail regarding electronic voting in ASI elections.

Such options are probably viable for APSI too.

Kindly look into it.

Thanks

Dr. Sreekar Harinatha, MS, MCh.,Consultant,Plastic, Cosmetic & Reconstructive Surgeon,

Apollo Hospitals,Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore.

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Ankur YahooDec 25, 2012

I think it is worth trying as a pilot project for issues other than elections. If all goes well and members agree elections can be done at a later stage

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Ashok KoulDec 22, 2012

BRILLIANT Surajitda. I had my own doubts about the security of electroinc voting, but could never  put them on paper so eloquently.  Thanks

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Surajit BhattacharyaDec 20, 2012

Dear Friends,

Even I voted online in the A.S.I. elections but unlike Devesh and Satish I am not going ga-ga about it

so soon. This has been tried in the U.S. elections for their overseas citizens and men and women in uniform and has been riddled with glitches. The Academy Award Oscars too had their own share of problems with the online voting. 

The unsolved problems include the ability of malicious actors to intercept Internet communications, log in as someone else, and hack into servers to rewrite or corrupt code. While these are also big problems in e-commerce, if a hacker steals money, the theft can soon be discovered. A bank or store can decide whether any losses are an acceptable cost of doing business.

Voting is a different and harder problem. Lost votes aren’t acceptable. And a voting system is supposed to protect the anonymity of a person’s vote—quite unlike a banking or e-commerce transaction—while at the same time validating that it was cast accurately, in a manner that maintains records that a losing candidate will accept as valid and verified. 

Given the well-understood vulnerabilities of networked computer systems, the problem is far from solved, Basically, it relies on the user’s computer being trustworthy. If a virus can intercept a vote at keyboard or screen, there is basically no defense. There are really fundamental problems. Perhaps a system could be tightened so some particular hack won’t work. But overall, systems tend to be vulnerable.

This year, the U.S. Department of Defense canceled plans to allow Internet voting by military personnel overseas after a security team audited a $22 million system developed by Accenture and found itvulnerable to cyber-attacks. 

While some nations, including Estonia, allow Internet voting—and other European nations and cities are pursuing projects (Italyis conducting a large test this year). The problems of Internet voting were made clear in a trial when the District of Columbia set up a system that let voters go online, enter an ID code they’d received in the mail, cast a vote, and get a record of the result. Election officials invited computer scientists to try to hack the system in a mock election.

Alex Halderman, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, and two grad students accepted that offer—and soon found an error in the source code that allowed them to completely steal the

election, They were even able to change the choice of candidates that appeared

on people’s screens. Which candidates got the fake votes? Skynet from the

"Terminator" movies and Bender, the alcohol-fueled robot from TV's

"Futurama." But the hackers had a serious point: that Internet voting

systems were a real threat to the integrity of the democratic process.

.Election administrators

have shied away from full-fledged Internet portals for 2012. Most of the online

systems in the last U.S. Presidential election required voters to download their ballots, print them,

sign them, scan them back into their computers, and send them to election officials via email or fax. But many of these voting programs use unencrypted email and are even more vulnerable to hackers than online portals. The use of email for transmitting voted ballots is actually the worst form of online voting, the least secure.

A number of computer scientists are working to develop a more secure alternative to Internet-based elections. They call it "evidence-based elections"—it is less important which machines are used so long as a paper trail is maintained. This allows results to be verified independently through audits and recounts.

The controversy over the 2000 Bush-Gore recount in Florida which led the the famous American Electile Dysfunction, looms large in discussions of Internet voting. Though the punch-card system used in many Florida precincts wasn't high-tech by today's standards, it lacked a voter-verified paper trail. Internet voting could be a further step toward electoral insecurity. We should let this science mature, we should let the A.S.I. members, particularly the loosing candidates, tell us about its authenticity, then we can adopt it in our Association.

Regards,

 Surajit Bhattacharya

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Prof.(Dr.) Devesh Mehta, Ahmedabad2012

I endorse Dr. Satshkumar's view that voting should be online, so that all members can vote for APSI elections irrespective of their presence in the annual conference.

-Prof.(Dr.) Devesh Mehta, Ahmedabad