Designing Voting Machines to Minimize Coercion
If someone wants to buy your vote, he’d like some proof that you’ve delivered the goods. Camera phones are one way for you to prove to your buyer that you voted the way he wants. Belgian voting machines have been designed to minimize that risk.
Once you have confirmed your vote, the next screen doesn’t display how you voted. So if one is coerced and has to deliver proof, one just has to take a picture of the vote one was coerced into, and then back out from the screen and change ones vote. The only workaround I see is for the coercer to demand a video of the complete voting process, in stead of a picture of the ballot.
The author is wrong that this is an advantage electronic ballots have over paper ballots. Paper voting systems can be designed with the same security features.
Stefan Wagner • June 27, 2007 12:58 PM
Aren’t paper votes already designed that way?
I can put my cross on the paper, and make a photo of that, but then I go to the desk and ask for a new form, because I made a mistake.
I surely can’t make a video, showing how I put the vote into the box.
Conclusion: Computer voting does weaken the process.